What are the positions on net neutrality?

Encyclopedia of Opinion

Question: What are the positions on net neutrality?
Position1 of 2›: Net neutrality is good
Argument‹4 of 4: Net neutrality promotes competition

Net neutrality ensures a level playing field between companies operating online, allowing consumers to freely choose which sites to browse in the free market place of media.

The argument

Without net neutrality, there would be nothing to stop a company like YouTube, with deep pockets, from paying telecommunications firms to ensure that their content is delivered faster than their competitors online. The existence of such a policy is vital and "closely tied to technological innovation, economic development, and information access." This would make it even more difficult for smaller actors in the video hosting space to compete with giants like YouTube. Net neutrality helps ensure that smaller businesses enter a level playing field online. Their products and services are discoverable and delivered online at the same quality as existing corporations. Additionally, these new innovators and actors in the market are now capable of providing new applications and innovations which ultimately yield economy-driving benefits! Without net neutrality, YouTube itself wouldn’t have gotten off the ground. When it entered the digital video hosting sector, Google Videos was the major player. If Google had been allowed to use its financial power to pay internet providers for preferential treatment on their networks, YouTube would have been unable to compete. It was only due to net neutrality that YouTube was able to offer a comparable service and draw users to its platform.

Context

Without net neutrality, companies with more resources would gain an unfair edge on smaller startups online. This would create an uneven playing field, which is bad for competition and consumers.

Premises

[P1]Without net neutrality, deep-pocketed firms like YouTube could pay telecom companies to have their content delivered faster than competitors'. [P2] Net neutrality keeps smaller businesses on a level playing field, ensuring their products are discoverable and delivered at the same quality as established corporations. [P3] YouTube itself only got off the ground because net neutrality stopped incumbent Google Video from buying preferential network treatment. [C] Therefore, net neutrality promotes competition.

Counter-arguments

Net neutrality may promote competition in some industries, but it does the opposite in the telecommunications sector. With all internet service providers forced to adopt a hands-off approach, there is no room to roll out new features and pricing models. The telecommunications industry, thanks to government interference, is among the least competitive industries. Fifty-six million households in the US alone have no choice over their broadband service provider. Additionally, Antitrust regulations already provide a pretense for the competitive process, and therefore, extra legislation and regulations on top of this are unnecessary.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P2] Net neutrality doesn't promote competition in every sector.

Framing

Competition is always good. Monopolies are always bad. Policies that promote competition are therefore good.

Proponents cited

Mark Zuckerberg
“Today people across the US are rallying together to save net neutrality. Net neutrality is the idea that the internet should be free and open for everyone. If a service provider can block you from seeing certain content or can make you pay extra for it, that hurts all of us and we should have rules against it.”
Astra Taylor
“Ultimately, the current argument is "not having net neutrality will hurt innovation," and you can make that argument, but I would rather make the public good argument, which is not just about innovation or nurturing new companies that will add to the nation's GDP, it's actually about creating a democratic public sphere.”
Al Franken
“I think the Internet has developed at this incredibly rapid pace because of net neutrality, because of the free nature of it, because a YouTube can start the way YouTube started.”
Save the Internet
“The consequences of a world without Net Neutrality would be devastating. Innovation would be stifled, competition limited, and access to information restricted. Consumer choice and the free market would be sacrificed to the interests of a few corporate executives.”
Cindy Cohn
“Your ability to access a website depends on your desire to access the website and not the deals that the intermediaries have made with each other.”
Julius Genachowski
“Net neutrality was essential for our economy; it was essential to preserve freedom and openness, both for economic reasons and free speech reasons.”