Network neutrality has been at the center of intense political discussions about Internet regulation. Net neutrality is the principle that all content on the Internet should be equally available to users without discrimination by service providers. Establishing legal protections for net neutrality is a necessary component to providing equitable access to online educational materials and services.

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Net Neutrality in Education:
Equal Opportunity Demands Equal Access
Craig Geffre
Western Oregon University
January 22, 2018

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When a person in the United States sits down at their computer or gets out their
smartphone, they generally expect to be able freely browse any legal content without their
Internet provider dictating what they can or cannot view, and they expect websites to deliver
content to them at the same speed, whether it is coming from Netflix or the New York Times.
This idea that online content should be treated equally is the central tenet of network neutrality,
also known has net neutrality or the open Internet, which is essential to ensuring that learners
have equal access to educational materials and opportunities.
The idea of net neutrality was first popularized shortly after the turn of the 21st century by
legal scholars Lawrence Lessig (2001) and Tim Wu (2003). The concept has come to be hotly
debated among elected officials, regulatory agencies, Internet providers, technology companies,
academics, and the public. Proponents of net neutrality have argued that legislation to protect the
open Internet is important to keeping Internet access fair and equal, preventing companies from
controlling information, and keeping sections of the Internet from being walled off. Those
standing in opposition to net neutrality posit that the Internet has remained open without
legislation in the past, the free market will take care of itself without regulation, and that net
neutrality rules would discourage private investment and innovation. This paper will be
discussing the positions on each side of the debate in exploring whether legislation should be
proactive in protecting net neutrality, if the free market should be left to regulate itself, and who
would be the most likely to be affected by the loss of neutrality.
Researchers Brent Skorup and Adam Thierer (2013) argue that introducing regulations
that mandate openness would stymie innovation. In their view:

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[I]t is evident that there must be a need for some closed devices and platforms or the
market would not have supplied them…. What is important is the fact that innovation
continues to unfold rapidly in both directions along the open versus closed continuum..
(p. 184)
Skorup and Thierer (2013) believe that the most important thing is to avoid regulations
that could slow the advancements that companies are making, and that the market will take care
of itself. If there is a demand for open information, companies will accommodate it; in other
cases, it may be more appropriate to have a closed Internet. Skorup and Thierer add that “most
corporate attempts to bottle up information, or close off their platforms, end badly. The walled
gardens of the past—CompuServe and America Online, for example—failed in the end” (p. 185).
According to this argument, the market sometimes demands a closed system, but such systems
have ultimately failed over time, and there is no reason to think that the end result would be
different today.
Skorup and Thierer’s (2013) positions are objectionable as the need to protect people’s
ability to freely access information should supersede corporate profit motives. Their argument
regarding closed platforms serving a market may be valid, but the market should not be equated
with consumer welfare. It may be profitable for a corporation to restrict its customers’ access to
information in some cases, but this comes at a potential detriment to those using the network as
they will only see what the company controlling the information wants them to see. This
argument is reflected by Lessig (2001), who expresses deep concerns about the potential for
sections of the Internet becoming walled off. Lessig believes that it is precisely because the
Internet has operated as an open resource that it has been successful as an “engine of innovation”
(p. 61) for businesses and the free sharing of ideas, but if service providers gain more power over

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what their customers see, they are likely to use it for their own strategic ends. This includes the
potential for blocking content that does not benefit their interests, such as information about
competitors and content that they see as costly or threatening. Such a development would not just
affect people in the United States, but across the world as segments of people are left unable to
continue contributing to or consuming from the broader online community.
Citing America Online and CompuServe, which itself was acquired by America Online in
1997, as evidence that the market will protect the open Internet is not very convincing. Their
decline in the late 1990s and early 2000s is something that occurred, in a technological sense,
long ago. The Internet and provider landscape has changed significantly since then, innovations
like online streaming and social networks have emerged, and smartphones have become a
standard method of accessing the Internet. They were in many ways failures at the beginning of
an era marked by rapid change, and no evidence is provided to indicate that restricted networks
were a primary cause for their downfall. Wu (2010) claims that America Online’s decline was
due to the explosion of broadband internet; now, rather than having to go through America
Online to access the Internet, “the phone and cable companies offered the Internet directly,
cutting out Internet Service Providers like AOL” (p. 263).
In Wu’s The Master Switch (2010), he argues that people should expect the opposite of a
market that preserves openness. Citing historical examples, he makes the point that information
systems that have begun as open in the past became consolidated and closed over time, becoming
dominated by just a handful of corporate entities. From telephones to radios to television, new
mediums of communication are said to follow this cycle, ultimately resulting in a few companies
controlling the networks and being able to dictate how they are used and what content is
delivered. Wu believes the Internet is no less vulnerable to this cycle and advocates that the

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government should ensure protection of the open Internet, and that people and companies need to
maintain the norm that blocking content will not be tolerated. Both legal and social maintenance
should maintain net neutrality.
As Lessig and Wu suggest, legislation should be proactive in preserving net neutrality.
The fact that it has remained mostly open in the past is no guarantee that it will remain open in
the future without legal protection. Furthermore, if a restrictive Internet becomes a serious
problem and gets strongly embedded into business models and pricing schemes, attempts at
imposing net neutrality rules may be more difficult and could be disruptive to companies that
develop a revenue reliance on practices that are contrary to an open Internet. Implementing
legislation in advance of any significant major developments could avoid a lot of issues later.
Another argument against net neutrality, advocated for by economist Jeffrey Eisenach
(2010), is that the free market can be left to regulate itself without net neutrality legislation.
Eisenach believes that a minimalist approach to legislation is best and that net neutrality rules
would discourage investors. In this approach, net neutral Internet providers could compete
directly with companies that impose Internet restrictions. While I think competition is very
important, the reality of the current service provider landscape is that many areas are already
operating under monopolistic conditions and new providers attempting to enter the market are at
an extreme disadvantage due to high costs and legal challenges (Brodkin, 2014). Some
communities have responded to limited service options by attempting to create their own local
municipal networks, but many states have enacted laws to prohibit networks like these that
compete with corporations (Koebler, 2015).
Law professor Barbara van Schewick (2010) points out the implications of these
monopolies without net neutrality protection. Schewick uses the example of Voice-over-Internet-

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Protocol (VoIP) for online phone services to point out that without regulations, a company with a
local monopoly “may have an incentive to block the VoIP services offered by independent
providers” (p. 243), forcing users to use the company’s VoIP or regular phone services.
Whatever content, services, or applications the monopolist provider chooses to create, there is an
incentive to exclude rival producers and try to drive them from the national market (Schewick,
2010).
Without net neutrality, these blocks on content or services would be perfectly legal, and
in a monopoly situation there may be no alternative net neutral provider to switch to. The service
provider could dictate where users watch videos, read news, or buy products if there is a
financial benefit in doing so, or block content that may be contrary to their financial interests.
While this may sound like an unlikely scenario, there are have already been instances of such
restrictions occurring. In one instance, “Comcast blocked the access of subscribers in the Boston
area to Google and associated Gmail services. When subscribers complained about the blockage,
Comcast’s customer support personnel blamed Google and suggested that Comcast subscribers
switch from Gmail to Comcast e-mail” (Nunziato, 2009, p. 11). The potential for content blocks
like this are potentially harmful to the free flow of information among the public and to
companies that would have to compete with the major Internet service providers.
Venture capitalist and entrepreneur Peter Thiel, a well-known net neutrality opponent,
has a very different perspective on monopolies. Thiel (2014) believes monopolies are not a bad
thing, and they often occur because a company “is so good at what it does that no other firm can
offer a close substitute” (p. 25). Citing Google as an example of a company that dominates the
Internet search market, Thiel claims that it is because Google operates with a near-monopoly that
they have the capacity to care about their products and workers, rather than expending all their

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energy on competition. In his view, a good and successful company must establish a monopoly
on something, and getting stuck in competition can result in failure. Thiel does state that
monopolies can come at the expense of the rest of society, but he believes the market is dynamic,
and that this encourages new companies to be innovative and move society forward.
This is certainly an intriguing perspective on monopolies, but to follow his example of
Google, that company is still always competing; even if other search engines like Yahoo and
Bing are far behind, Google still needs to keep its edge and people have options. Thiel’s (2014)
other examples of innovation not being strangled by monopolies are AT&T’s telephone
monopoly which was eventually broken by cellphones and IBM’s hardware monopoly that was
overtaken by Microsoft’s software developments. What Thiel states in his examples, yet does not
acknowledge as relevant, is that innovations to overcome these two monopolies took decades to
occur. If people are subjected to a monopoly situation by an Internet service provider and no net
neutrality legislation is in place, it could be many years before the next great innovation allows
them to move beyond the limits that are currently in place.
Because so many people in the United States lack viable broadband alternatives with
companies often operating with near or actual local monopolies on Internet services, the free
market cannot be left to regulate itself without net neutrality legislation in place. Such conditions
may lead to many communities having their access to information and broader services
restricted, which could profoundly affect learners’ opportunities online. If a service with a local
broadband monopoly decided to block specific video sharing services or social media platforms
and direct users to utilize another competing service, people in that area would no longer have
access to that website as a cultural resource for consuming and producing media and would not
be able to access the educational materials that are housed there. While innovations may

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eventually render this point obsolete, that time has certainly not arrived, and no length of time for
restricted Internet access is acceptable. Such gaps could contribute to the digital divide that
already affects those in the United States with the lowest rates of highspeed Internet access.
Research has shown that ethnic minorities, including Latino and Black populations, have
substantially lower computer and Internet access compared to White families across every
income category (Boone, Hendricks, & Waller, 2014). In areas with very few or just one
broadband provider, restricting content could disproportionately impact racial and ethnic
minorities who are already more limited in their access. According to law professor Dawn
Nunziato (2009), the implications of net neutrality constitute a free speech issue. For example,
Comcast has previously blocked file sharing services so independent songwriters and movie
producers could not share their content, and BellSouth once prohibited its users from accessing
MySpace.com when it was a popular social site as well as YouTube, ostensibly over concerns
about bandwidth consumption (Nunziato, 2009). The inability to freely share user-generated
content and to access some of the Internet’s most popular and important websites for
communication ends up limiting people’s ability to participate in discourse with the wider
national and international community and serves to silence groups of people.
Concerns of being limited in their ability to equally participate in social networks and
digital content is something that should be shared across races, ethnicities, and nationalities.
Without net neutrality, allowing price differentials based on content availability and allowing
some preferred websites to operate faster than others would be fully legal. It is possible that
wealthy families could afford to have unrestricted or at least less restricted Internet access, but
people at the middle and lower ends of the financial spectrum would be less likely to be able to
afford the premiums involved. Websites could also be required to pay for premium service

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speeds, so independent websites run by individuals or sites owned by small companies may be
less competitive than websites who can afford to pay for “fast lane” treatment from service
providers. This effectively creates a tiered Internet situation where big companies and people
with more financial resources have substantially better service and content opportunities than
those of more modest means. By limiting segments of the population, everyone is at a deficit.
This could mean fewer content creators, fewer opportunities for small businesses to reach their
audiences, and the inability of educational and non-profit websites to reach those who need
unrestricted access to their content and services. As one study on Internet access puts it, “As
Americans we win together and we lose together, and what impacts one part of our society
affects us all” (Boone, Hendricks, & Waller, 2014, p. 4).
Economist Jeffrey Eisenach (2010) takes a contrary position, arguing that net neutrality
regulations will hamper investment and reduce access. He believes that it is because of the
United States’ minimal regulation of the Internet that there has been so much success in
attracting private investment in broadband growth and fostering innovations. As evidence,
Eisenach points to decreases in costs in per megabit broadband costs and increases in home
broadband adoption. However, I don’t believe that guaranteeing an open Internet conflicts with
continued investment and innovation in broadband Internet, and part of broadband’s success is
likely owed to the fact that the Internet has remained mostly open to date. One of Eisenach’s
primary concerns is with the government interfering with and micromanaging the operation of
private broadband networks. I understand this concern, but I think it belongs in a separate
discussion about whether it is appropriate to classify the Internet as a utility. Legal protection for
a free and open Internet can be implemented apart from that issue and I think it is invalid to
argue against the concept of net neutrality by bundling it into the utilities question.

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While some factions contend that the free market can regulate itself and that service
providers should remain unencumbered by any regulations, others have responded with
compelling arguments about the current monopolistic state of broadband service in the United
States and the risks that Internet restrictions pose to free speech. To maintain an open Internet
that provides opportunities and education to as many people as possible, and ensure that our
ability to access and create content without significant corporate interference is protected,
implementing net neutrality regulations is essential. However, congress has yet to act on this
topic, and the decision about net neutrality has been in the hands of the Federal Communications
Commissions (FCC), leaving the future of the open Internet in a state of flux.
In 2015, the Federal Communications Commission voted in favor of regulating the
Internet as a public utility, allowing the government to enforce net neutrality rules, but this
decision has proved to be short-lived. The new chair of the Federal Communications
Commission, Ajit Pai, has been a vocal opponent of this regulatory move and the future of net
neutrality is in question. Pai (2017) does not think that there was a problem to be fixed to begin
with and has called the reclassification of the Internet “a disproportionate response akin to
wielding the proverbial sledgehammer against a flea,” and has argued that government
regulations have slowed infrastructure investment from Internet service providers. It is on this
premise that the FCC voted in late 2017 to remove the regulations implemented two years
earlier, returning the power of deciding how Internet traffic should be treated back to the service
providers. I believe this politicized back-and-forth of regulations underscores our need of legal
protections for an open Internet. Without such protections, vulnerable populations in our society,
who often have extremely limited options when it comes to Internet access, are at risk of having

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their access to information and learning opportunities throttled by decisions made by corporate
entities.

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References
Boone, M., Hendricks, M.L., & Waller, R. (2014). Closing the digital divide and its impact on
minorities. The Global eLearning Journal, 3(1), 1-6.
Broadkin, J. (2014, April 6). One big reason we lack Internet competition: Starting an ISP is
really hard. Ars Technica. Retrieved from https://arstechnica.com/business/2014/04/one-
big-reason-we-lack-internet-competition-starting-an-isp-is-really-hard/
Eisenach, J. (2010, July 13). Don’t drag broadband into the net neutrality morass. The Daily
Caller. Retrieved from http://dailycaller.com/2010/07/13/don%E2%80%99t-drag-
broadband-into-the-net-neutrality-morass/
Koebler, J. (2015, January 14). The 21 laws states use to crush broadband competition. Vice.
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Thiel, P. (2014). Zero to one. New York: Crown Business.

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Wu, T. (2003). Network neutrality, broadband discrimination. Journal of Telecommunications
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