1. Jon Brodkin, “Verizon Throttled Fire Department’s ‘Unlimited’ Data during Calif. Wildfire,” Ars Technica, August 21, 2018, https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/08/verizon-throttled-fire-departments-unlimited-data-during-calif-wildfire/.
2. Initially, the net neutrality debate was largely confined to academia and industry. Within academia, the most prominent battle was fought between Tim Wu, a vocal proponent of net neutrality and progenitor of the term, and Christopher Yoo, one of the most influential skeptics of net neutrality. See, for example, Tim Wu and Christopher Yoo, “Keeping the Internet Neutral? Tim Wu and Christopher Yoo Debate,” Federal Communications Law Journal 59, no. 3 (2007): 575–92.
3. Jerome H. Saltzer, David P. Reed, and David D. Clark, “End-to-End Arguments in System Design,” ACM Transactions on Computer Systems (TOCS) 2, no. 4 (1984): 277–88.
4. Roxanda Elliott, “How Page Load Time Affects Bounce Rate and Page Views,” Section.Io, August 10, 2017, https://www.section.io/blog/page-load-time-bounce-rate/. See also Daniel An and Pat Meenan, “Why Marketers Should Care about Mobile Page Speed,” Think with Google, July 2016, https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/marketing-resources/experience-design/mobile-page-speed-load-time/.
5. Given that net neutrality has evolved into one of the most contentious public policy debates in the history of American telecommunications, the relative dearth of in-depth book-length studies about the subject is somewhat surprising. Dawn C. Nunziato’s book Virtual Freedom: Net Neutrality and Free Speech in the Internet Age (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009) discusses the manifold threats to free speech online emanating from the private sector, including internet service providers as well as other powerful private conduits of online expression such as Google. Another exception is Zack Stiegler’s edited volume Regulating the Web: Network Neutrality and the Fate of the Open Internet (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2013), which features the history, politics, and ideologies animating the net neutrality debate. Other key books often associated with the net neutrality debate actually deal only tangentially with the issue but provide critical political and economic context. For example, Susan Crawford’s excellent Captive Audience: The Telecom Industry and Monopoly Power in the New Gilded Age (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004) provides a rigorous history of how today’s telecommunications monopolies came into being. Longtime net neutrality advocate Marvin Ammori has written a short e-book on the subject titled On Internet Freedom (Elkat Books, 2013). There is also a growing body of scholarship about net neutrality in academic journals, including two special issues devoted to net neutrality in the International Journal of Communication, published in 2007 and 2016. For an early article linking net neutrality and the history of common carrier regulations, see Christian Sandvig, “Network Neutrality Is the New Common Carriage,” Info: The Journal of Policy, Regulation, and Strategy 9, nos. 2–3 (2006): 136–47. For an early article advocating for a bolder policy vision beyond net neutrality, see Sascha Meinrath and Victor Pickard, “The New Network Neutrality: Criteria for Internet Freedom,” International Journal of Communication Law and Policy 12 (2008): 225–43. For an excellent overview of the history of net neutrality, see Harold Feld, “The History of Net Neutrality in 13 Years of Tales of the Sausage Factory (with a Few Additions),” WetMachine, January 10, 2018, https://wetmachine.com/tales-of-the-sausage-factory/the-history-of-net-neutrality-in-13-years-of-tales-of-the-sausage-factory-with-a-few-additions-part-i/.
6. The dominant business-oriented approach to net neutrality is evident both in books that support net neutrality, including Barbara van Schewick’s Internet Architecture and Innovation (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012) and Tim Wu’s The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires (New York: Knopf, 2011), and works that oppose it, such as Thomas Hazlett’s The Fallacy of Net Neutrality (New York: Encounter Books, 2011).
7. A great exception to this tendency is the work by media scholar Russell Newman, who carefully situates the net neutrality debate within a much wider historical and political economic context. See Russell Newman, The Paradoxes of Network Neutralities (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, forthcoming).
1. These ideological positions are detailed in Victor Pickard, America’s Battle for Media Democracy: The Triumph of Corporate Libertarianism and the Future of Media Reform (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015).
2. For an excellent overview of this early history of the internet and its privatization, see Ben Tarnoff, “The Internet Should Be a Public Good,” Jacobin, August 31, 2016, https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/08/internet-public-dns-privatization-icann-netflix/. For an authoritative history of the creation of the internet, see Janet Abbate, Inventing the Internet (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999). See also Dan Schiller, Digital Capitalism: Networking the Global Market System (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999).
3. These figures are from Rajiv C. Shah and Jay P. Kesan, “The Privatization of the Internet’s Backbone Network,” Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media 51, no. 1 (2007): 93–109.
4. Robert McChesney, “Between Cambridge and Palo Alto,” Catalyst 2, no. 1 (2018), https://catalyst-journal.com/v012/n01/between-cambridge-and-palo-alto.
5. Tim Wu, “A Proposal for Network Neutrality,” June 2002, http://www.timwu.org/OriginalNNProposal.pdf.
6. For a magisterial history of U.S. postal policy, see Richard R. John, Spreading the News: The American Postal System from Franklin to Morse (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995).
7. For authoritative histories of American telecommunications, see Richard R. John, Network Nation: Inventing American Telecommunications (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010) and Robert MacDougall, The People’s Network: The Political Economy of the Telephone in the Gilded Age (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014). MacDougall’s book also looks at Canadian telecommunications history. Both books take advantage of an SBC archive based in San Antonio that opened up in the early 2000s. Access to these new materials has shifted the historiography by complicating AT&T-centric historical narratives. For an excellent social history of American telecommunications, see Dan Schiller’s forthcoming book From Post Office to Internet: The Missing History of US Telecommunications.
8. John, Network Nation, 170–99.
9. Paul Starr, The Creation of the Media (New York: Basic Books, 2004), 189. Parts of this historical analysis draw from Meinrath and Pickard, “The New Network Neutrality,” 225–43. See also Sascha Meinrath and Victor Pickard, “Transcending Net Neutrality: Ten Steps toward an Open Internet,” Journal of Internet Law 12, no. 6 (2008): 1, 12–21.
10. Schiller, From Post Office to Internet.
11. MacDougall, The People’s Network, 94–101. Another important telephone-related popular movement was the public uprising around the rechartering of the Chicago Telephone Company’s franchise agreement in 1907. See John, Network Nation, 327–39.
12. MacDougall, The People’s Network, 132–73; Starr, The Creation of the Media, 193.
13. Starr, The Creation of the Media, 201–2.
14. MacDougall, The People’s Network, 1–18.
15. John, Network Nation, 263–68. See also MacDougall, The People’s Network, 174, and Schiller, From Post Office to Internet.
16. For an excellent treatment of this historical struggle and its outcomes, see John, Network Nation, 370–406. Michael A. Janson and Christopher S. Yoo, “The Wires Go to War: The U.S. Experiment with Government Ownership of the Telephone System During World War I” (2013). Faculty Scholarship. Paper 467. http://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/faculty_scholarship/467.
17. Richard John points out that the name of the antitrust suit’s resolution is more accurately the McReynolds settlement. See Network Nation, 359–63.
18. John, Network Nation. See also Schiller, From Post Office to Internet.
19. Network effects refers to how a network’s value grows as its membership increases, thus creating a kind of path dependency that is difficult to reverse as it becomes increasingly irrational for new members to join smaller networks.
20. AT&T held a near monopoly over the domestic telephone service; by the end of 1933, AT&T owned almost 94 percent of the nation’s 82,086,828 total miles of wire, produced over 87 percent of the 15,400,000 telephones in the country, and employed nearly 90 percent of all telephone workers. See Economic Notes (New York: Labor Research Association), May 1935, 8.
21. Dan Schiller, “The Hidden History of US Public Service Telecommunications, 1919–1956,” Info 9, nos. 2–3 (2007): 18.
22. For an early history of the FCC and radio broadcasting that documents how the medium became so commercialized from its inception, see Robert McChesney, Telecommunications, Mass Media & Democracy: The Battle for the Control of U.S. Broadcasting, 1928–1935 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993).
23. Quoted in Pickard, America’s Battle for Media Democracy, 38.
24. Communications Act, 47 U.S.C. § 201(b) (1934).
25. Communications Act, 47 U.S.C. § 202(a) (1934). I thank Kevin Taglang for pointing out these quotes.
26. For more details regarding the Walker Report, see Victor Pickard, “A Giant Besieged: AT&T, an Activist FCC, and Contestation in Corporate-State Relations, 1935–1939” (paper presented at the Union for Democratic Communications, St. Louis, April 22–25, 2004). For an earlier muckraking account, see N. R. Danielian, AT&T: The Story of Industrial Conquest (New York: Vanguard, 1939).
27. “$750,000 Fund for A.T. & T. Investigation Wins the Approval of Senate Committee,” New York Times, February 6, 1935, 29; “Roosevelt Orders Telephone Inquiry,” New York Times, March 16, 1935, 21.
28. Robert Britt Horwitz, The Irony of Regulatory Reform (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 137.
29. Economic Notes (New York: Labor Research Association), July 1939, 10.
30. For a discussion of natural monopolies, see Eli Noam, “Is Cable Television a Natural Monopoly?” Communications: International Journal of Communications Research 9, nos. 2–3 (1984): 241–59; Robert Babe, Telecommunications in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990), 137–50; C. Edwin Baker, Media, Markets, and Democracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 35; Crawford, Captive Audience, 37–38.
31. Starr points out that although an 1894 Supreme Court case established nondiscrimination, it was only in 1910 that Congress amended the Interstate Commerce Act to unambiguously define telephone and telegraph companies as common carriers. See Starr, The Creation of the Media, 188.
32. Milton Mueller and other revisionist historians have pointed out that a self-interested AT&T happily embraced the idea of “universal service” to argue that only one system under one regulatory regime was needed. The phrase itself became a kind of public relations slogan for the Bell system. See Milton Mueller, “The Telephone War: Interconnection, Competition, and Monopoly in the Making of Universal Telephone Service” (PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1989), 160. See generally John, Network Nation, 340–69. Smaller, local carriers, including rural co-ops, also played a key role in building out to remote communities.
33. For a comprehensive scholarly analysis, see Robert Cannon, “The Legacy of the Federal Communications Commission’s Computer Inquiries,” Federal Communications Law Journal 55, no. 2 (2002): 167–206. For a discussion of how the FCC’s Computer Inquiries relate to net neutrality, see Becky Lentz, “Excavating Historicity in the U.S. Network Neutrality Debate: An Interpretive Perspective on Policy Change,” Communication, Culture & Critique 6, no. 4 (2013): 568–97.
34. These examples are used in Robinson Meyer, “Antonin Scalia Totally Gets Net Neutrality,” Atlantic, May 16, 2014, https:/www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/05/net-neutralitys-little-known-hero-antonin-scalia/361315/.
35. We thank Dan Schiller for sharing this analysis with us. He discusses this history in Dan Schiller, Telematics and Government (Norwood, NJ: Ablex, 1982), 22–41.
36. S. Derek Turner of Free Press argues that the Telecom Act, to the extent that it engaged with the internet, actually held some pro-competition initiatives, but industry lobbyists were able to prevent them from ever being actualized. See Changing Media: Public Interest Policies for the Digital Age (Washington, DC: Free Press, 2009).
37. Parts of this section draw from Victor Pickard and Pawel Popiel, “The Media Democracy Agenda: The Strategy and Legacy of FCC Commissioner Michael J. Copps,” Evanston, IL: Benton Foundation, 2018.
38. Michael Copps, “Dissenting Statement of Commissioner Michael J. Copps, in the Matter of Inquiry concerning High-Speed Access to the Internet over Cable and Other Facilities Internet over Cable Declaratory Order Proceeding Appropriate Regulatory Treatment for Broadband Access to the Internet over Cable Facilities GN No. 00-185,” 2002, https://transition.fcc.gov/Speeches/Copps/Statements/2002/stmjc210.html.
39. Christopher Stern, “FCC Gives Cable Firms Net Rights,” Washington Post, March 15, 2002.
40. Michael Copps, “Remarks of Michael J. Copps, Federal Communications Commissioner: ‘The Beginning of the End of the Internet? Discrimination, Closed Networks, and the Future of Cyberspace,’” New America Foundation, Washington, DC, October 9, 2003, https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-239800A1.pdf.
41. Ted Hearn, “Cable-Modem Appeal Denied by Ninth Circuit,” Multichannel News, April 1, 2004, https://www.multichannel.com/news/cable-modem-appeal-denied-ninth-circuit-270836.
42. For a discussion of this decision, particularly how its aftermath played out on Capitol Hill, see Victor Pickard, “After Net Neutrality,” LSE Media Policy Project, July 18, 2016, http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/mediapolicyproject/2016/07/18/after-net-neutrality/.
43. National Cable & Telecommunications Association v. Brand X Internet Services, 545 U.S. 967 (2005).
44. Michael Copps, “Concurring Statement of Commissioner Michael J. Copps Re: Preserving the Open Internet, GN Docket No. 09-191, Broadband Industry Practices, WC Docket No. 07-52,” 2010; Federal Communications Commission, Policy Statement, “Appropriate Framework for Broadband Access to the Internet over Wireline Facilities,” CC Docket No. 05-151, 2005, https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/FCC-05–151A1.pdf.
45. Robert McDowell, “Who Should Solve This Internet Crisis?” Washington Post, July 28, 2008. Some anti–net neutrality activists tried to cast net neutrality as a government intrusion. Leading libertarian policy analyst Adam D. Thierer referred to net neutrality as “a fairness doctrine for the internet.” See “A Fairness Doctrine for the Internet,” City Journal, October 18, 2007, https://www.city-journal.org/html/fairness-doctrine-internet-10315.html.
46. Craig Aaron, “Cracking Down on Comcast,” Guardian, July 16, 2008, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2008/jul/16/internet.cablewirelessbusiness.
47. Karl Bode, “Comcast Responds to Traffic Shaping Accusations,” DSL Reports, August 21, 2007, http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Comcast-Responds-To-Traffic-Shaping-Accusations-86816.
48. Dan Frommer, “Comcast’s Supporters at FCC Meeting: Paid, Asleep,” Business Insider, February 26, 2008, https://www.businessinsider.com/2008/2/comcasts-supporters-at-fcc-meeting-paid-sleeping-strangers.
49. Broadband Industry Practices, Petition of Free Press et al. for Declaratory Ruling That Degrading an Internet Application Violates the FCC’s Internet Policy Statement and Does Not Meet an Exception for “Reasonable Network Management,” WC Docket No. 07-52; Memorandum Opinion and Order, FCC 08-183 (August 1, 2008).
50. Comcast Corp. v. FCC, 600 F.3d 642 (DC Cir. 2010).
51. Quoted in Cecilia Kang, “FCC’s Copps: Net Neutrality Requires Reclassification of Broadband,” Washington Post, December 3, 2010, http://voices.washingtonpost.com/posttech/2010/12/fccs_copps_net_neutrality_requ.html.
52. Michael Copps, “Statement of Commissioner Michael J. Copps on Chairman Genachowski’s Announcement to Reclassify Broadband,” Federal Communications Commission, May 6, 2010, https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-297946A1.pdf.
53. Verizon v. FCC, 740 F.3d 623 (DC Cir. 2014). The Open Internet Order, issued shortly after the Comcast decision, had endeavored to protect net neutrality by requiring transparency and prohibiting blocking and unreasonable discrimination by ISPs.
54. Edward Wyatt, “F.C.C., in a Shift, Backs Fast Lanes for Web Traffic,” New York Times, April 23, 2014, https://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/24/technology/fcc-new-net-neutrality-rules.html.
55. Marvin Ammori, “The Case for Net Neutrality: What’s Wrong with Obama’s Internet Policy,” Foreign Affairs, June 16, 2014, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2014-06-16/case-net-neutrality.
56. Michael Copps, “The Biggest FCC Vote Ever,” Benton Foundation, January 6, 2015, https://www.benton.org/blog/biggest-fcc-vote-ever.
57. Jose Pagliery, “AT&T: We’re Going to Sue the Government,” CNN Business, February 4, 2015, https://money.cnn.com/2015/02/04/technology/att-fcc-letter/. The NCTA, CTIA, American Cable Association, and USTelecom also sued to overturn the FCC’s decision.
58. Cecilia Kang, “Court Backs Rules Treating Internet as Utility, Not Luxury,” New York Times, June 14, 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/15/technology/net-neutrality-fcc-appeals-court-ruling.html.
59. This historic turn is discussed in Victor Pickard, “It’s Not Too Late to Save Net Neutrality from a Captured FCC,” Nation, May 5, 2017, https://www.thenation.com/article/its-not-too-late-to-save-net-neutrality-from-a-captured-fcc/.
60. Jim Puzzanghera, “Trump Names New FCC Chairman: Ajit Pai, Who Wants to Take a ‘Weed Whacker’ to Net Neutrality,” Los Angeles Times, January 23, 2017, http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-pai-fcc-chairman-20170123-story.html.
61. Cecilia Kang, “F.C.C. Chairman Pushes Sweeping Changes to Net Neutrality Rules,” New York Times, April 26, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/26/technology/net-neutrality.html.
62. Kaleigh Rogers, “99.7 Percent of Unique FCC Comments Favored Net Neutrality,” Motherboard, October 15, 2018, https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/3kmedj/997-percent-of-unique-fcc-comments-favored-net-neutrality.
63. Dell Cameron, “FCC Emails Show Agency Spread Lies to Bolster Dubious DDoS Attack Claims,” Gizmodo, June 5, 2018, https://gizmodo.com/fcc-emails-show-agency-spread-lies-to-bolster-dubious-d-1826535344.
64. FCC, “FCC Releases Restoring Internet Freedom Order,” December 14, 2017, https://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-releases-restoring-internet-freedom-order.
65. This is documented in Meinrath and Pickard, “The New Network Neutrality.” See also Meinrath and Pickard, “Transcending Net Neutrality.”
66. Nunziato, Virtual Freedom, 5–6.
67. Nunziato, Virtual Freedom, 7.
68. Geoff Boucher, “AT&T: Pearl Jam Mute a ‘Mistake,’” Los Angeles Times, August 10, 2007, http://articles.latimes.com/2007/aug/10/entertainment/et-quick10.s3.
69. Timothy Karr, “Net Neutrality Violations: A Brief History,” Free Press, January 24, 2018, https://www.freepress.net/our-response/expert-analysis/explainers/net-neutrality-violations-brief-history.
1. Thomas Streeter, The Net Effect: Romanticism, Capitalism, and the Internet, Critical Cultural Communication (New York: New York University Press, 2011), 106–15; Megan Sapnar Ankerson, Dot-Com Design: The Rise of a Usable, Social, Commercial Web, Critical Cultural Communication (New York: New York University Press, 2018).
2. White House, “The Framework for Global Electronic Commerce,” July 1, 1997, https://clintonwhitehouse4.archives.gov/WH/New/Commerce/read.html.
3. “How the Internet Killed the Phone Business,” Economist, September 15, 2005, https://www.economist.com/leaders/2005/09/15/how-the-internet-killed-the-phone-business.
4. Reza Dibadj, “Competitive Debacle in Local Telephony: Is the 1996 Telecommunications Act to Blame?” Washington University Law Review 81, no. 1 (2003): 14–15.
5. Tom Downes and Shane Greenstein, “Universal Access and Local Internet Markets in the US,” Research Policy 31, no. 7 (2002): 1035–52.
6. See Yochai Benkler et al., “Next Generation Connectivity: A Review of Broadband Internet Transitions and Policy from around the World.” This 2010 report was commissioned by the FCC and conducted by a team of researchers led by Yochai Benkler at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University.
7. See Rob Frieden, “Lessons from Broadband Development in Canada, Japan, Korea and the United States,” Telecommunications Policy 29, no. 8 (2005): 602.
8. Mark Cooper, “Open Communications Platforms: The Physical Infrastructure as the Bedrock of Innovation and Democratic Discourse in the Internet Age,” Journal on Telecommunications and High Technology Law 2 (2003): 223.
9. We defer to the Federal Communications Commission’s current standard for what constitutes broadband internet: a minimum download speed of at least twenty-five Mbps and a minimum upload speed of at least three Mbps. See Federal Communications Commission, “Internet Access Services: Status as of June 30, 2017,” Washington, DC: November 2018, https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-355166A1.pdf.
10. Adam D. Thierer and Clyde Wayne Crews, What’s Yours Is Mine: Open Access and the Rise of Infrastructure Socialism (Washington, DC: Cato Institute, 2003).
11. Ted Hearn, “Powell: ‘Scream’ at Forced Access,” Multichannel, October 26, 2001, https://www.multichannel.com/news/powell-scream-forced-access-155848.
12. Jonathan E. Nuechterlein and Philip J. Weiser, Digital Crossroads: Telecommunications Law and Policy in the Internet Age (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2013), 418.
13. See Tim Wu, “Wireless Carterfone,” International Journal of Communication 1 (2007): 389–426.
14. This often-neglected policy history is discussed in John Bergmayer, “We Need Title II Protections in the Uncompetitive Broadband Market,” Public Knowledge, April 26, 2017, https://www.publicknowledge.org/news-blog/blogs/we-need-title-ii-protections-in-the-uncompetitive-broadband-market.
15. Amitai Etzioni, Moral Dimension: Toward a New Economics (New York: Free Press, 1988), 218.
16. Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble to Get inside Our Heads (New York: Knopf, 2016).
17. Ben H. Bagdikian, The New Media Monopoly (Boston: Beacon, 2004), 137–38.
18. Andrew Jay Schwartzman, Cheryl A. Leanza, and Harold Feld, “The Legal Case for Diversity in Broadcast Ownership,” in The Future of Media: Resistance and Reform in the 21st Century, ed. Robert W. McChesney, Russell Newman, and Ben Scott (New York: Seven Stories, 2005), 149–50.
19. Rani Molla, “A Merged T-Mobile and Sprint Will Still Be Smaller Than AT&T or Verizon,” Recode, April 30, 2018, https://www.recode.net/2018/4/30/17300652/tmobile-sprint-att-verizon-merger-wireless-subscriber-chart.
20. Crawford, Captive Audience, 16.
21. Hannah Trostle and Christopher Mitchell, “Profiles of Monopoly: Big Cable & Telecom,” Minneapolis: Institute for Local SelfReliance, July 31, 2018, https://ilsr.org/monopoly-networks/.
22. Wu, The Master Switch, 247.
23. Rob Bluey, “Q&A: FCC Chairman Ajit Pai on Repealing Obama’s Net Neutrality Rules,” Daily Signal, November 21, 2017, https://www.dailysignal.com/2017/11/21/qa-fcc-chairman-explains-hes-ending-obamas-heavy-handed-internet-regulations/.
24. Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations: Books I–III, ed. Andrew S. Skinner (London: Penguin Books, 1999), 232.
25. Quoted in Mark Cooper, Media Ownership and Democracy in the Digital Information Age: Promoting Diversity with First Amendment Principles and Market Structure Analysis (Stanford, CA: Center for Internet & Society, Stanford Law School, 2003), 114.
26. Robert McChesney discusses the “ISP cartel” in Digital Disconnect: How Capitalism Is Turning the Internet against Democracy (New York: New Press, 2013), 115–19. See also Robert McChesney, “Be Realistic, Demand the Impossible: Three Radically Democratic Internet Policies,” in The Future of Internet Policy, ed. Peter Decherney and Victor Pickard (New York: Routledge, 2016), 40–41.
27. Jon Brodkin, “Comcast Says It’s Too Expensive to Compete against Other Cable Companies,” Ars Technica, September 24, 2014, https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/09/comcast-says-its-too-expensive-to-compete-against-other-cable-companies/. For a political and economic history of Comcast’s rise to power, see Lee McGuigan and Victor Pickard, “The Political Economy of Comcast,” in Global Media Giants, ed. Ben Birkinbine, Rodrigo Gómez García, and Janet Wasko (New York: Routledge, 2016), 72–91.
28. Trostle and Mitchell, “Profiles of Monopoly.”
29. Susan Crawford, “The Looming Cable Monopoly,” Yale Law & Policy Review, June 1, 2010, https://ylpr.yale.edu/inter_alia/looming-cable-monopoly.
30. Cynthia Littleton, “Charter to Become Second-Largest Cable Operator in Divestiture Pact with Comcast,” Variety, April 28, 2014, https://variety.com/2014/tv/news/charter-to-become-second-largest-cable-operator-in-divestiture-pact-with-comcast-1201165594/.
31. Philip J. Reny and Michael A. Williams, “The Deterrent Effect of Cable System Clustering on Overbuilders: An Economic Analysis of Behrend v. Comcast,” Economics Bulletin 35, no. 1 (2015): 519–27.
32. Roger Cheng, “Verizon to End Rollout of FiOS,” Wall Street Journal, March 30, 2010, http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702303410404575151773432729614.
33. Nathan Ingraham, “Verizon Wireless’ Partnership with Comcast Sets Up Potential Conflicts with FiOS,” Verge, January 31, 2012, https://www.theverge.com/2012/1/31/2761023/verizon-wireless-comcast-partnership-fios-xfinity-conflict.
34. Federal Communications Commission, “Internet Access Services: Status as of December 31, 2016,” 6.
35. “A Third of U.S. Households Have Three or More Smartphones,” Pew Research Center, May 25, 2017, http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/05/25/a-third-of-americans-live-in-a-household-with-three-or-more-smartphones/.
36. “OECD Fixed Broadband Basket, High User,” Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, June 2017, http://www.oecd.org/sti/broadband/4.10.FBB-High_2017.xls.
37. “State of the Internet Q1 2017,” Akamai, 2017, https://www.akamai.com/fr/fr/multimedia/documents/state-of-the-internet/q1–2017-state-of-the-internet-connectivity-report.pdf.
38. Susan Crawford, Fiber: The Coming Tech Revolution—and Why America Might Miss It (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2018), 39.
39. Nick Russo et al., “The Cost of Connectivity 2014,” Washington, DC: New America Foundation, October 2014, https://www.newamerica.org/oti/policy-papers/the-cost-of-connectivity-2014/.
40. “OECD Fixed Broadband Basket, High User.”
41. Benkler et al., “Next Generation Connectivity”; Christopher T. Marsden, “Comparative Case Studies in Implementing Net Neutrality: A Critical Analysis of Zero Rating,” SCRIPTed 13, no. 1 (May 2016): 1–39.
42. Timothy Karr, “Net Neutrality Violations: A Brief History,” Free Press, January 24, 2018, https://www.freepress.net/our-response/expert-analysis/explainers/net-neutrality-violations-brief-history.
43. See, for example, Shalini Ramachandran, “Cord-Cutting: Cable’s Offer You Can’t Refuse,” Wall Street Journal, November 13, 2012, https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887324073504578109513660989132. Most egregiously, in 2013 Time Warner generated a 97 percent profit margin on high-speed internet. This was revealed by Bruce Kushnick in “Time Warner Cable’s 97 Percent Profit Margin on High-Speed Internet Service Exposed,” Huffington Post, February 2, 2015, https://www.huffingtonpost.com/bruce-kushnick/time-warner-cables-97-pro_b_6591916.html.
44. Susan Crawford and Ben Scott, “Be Careful What You Wish For: Why Europe Should Avoid the Mistakes of US Internet Access Policy,” Berlin: Stiftung Neue Verantwortung, June 2015, https://www.stiftung-nv.de/sites/default/files/us-eu.internet.access.policy.pdf.
45. Charter Communications, “Charter Announces Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2017 Results,” February 2, 2018, https://newsroom.charter.com/press-releases/charter-announces-fourth-quarter-and-full-year-2017-results/.
46. Martin Baccardax, “Comcast Tops Q4 Profit Estimates, Boosts Dividend and Stock Buyback Plans,” TheStreet, January 24, 2018, https://www.thestreet.com/story/14460395/1/comcast-tops-q4-earnings-estimates-boosts-dividend-and-buyback-plans.html. For a broader economic history of Comcast, see McGuigan and Pickard, “The Political Economy of Comcast.”
1. Josh Breitbart, “You Can’t Be Moving on a Neutral Train,” Civil Defense, April 19, 2006, https://breitbart.wordpress.com/2006/04/19/you-cant-be-moving-on-a-neutral-train/; Arianna Huffington, “‘Net Neutrality’: Why Are the Bad Guys So Much Better at Naming Things?” Huffington Post, May 3, 2006, https://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/net-neutrality-why-are-th_b_20311.html.
2. Ken Fisher, “Poll: Americans Don’t Want Net Neutrality (or Maybe They Don’t Know What It Is),” Ars Technica, September 18, 2008, https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2006/09/7772/.
3. Robert D. Atkinson, Daniel Castro, and Alan McQuinn, “How Tech Populism Is Undermining Innovation,” Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, April 2015, 1, https://itif.org/publications/2015/04/01/how-tech-populism-undermining-innovation. For a more in-depth analysis of the convergence of populist political logics and policy, see Danny Kimball, “Wonkish Populism in Media Advocacy and Net Neutrality Policy Making,” International Journal of Communication 10 (2016): 5949–68.
4. Arshad Mohammed, “SBC Head Ignites Access Debate,” Washington Post, November 4, 2005, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/03/AR2005110302211.html.
5. In the spirit of full disclosure, one of the authors, Victor Pickard, worked at Free Press in 2009 and now sits on the organization’s board.
6. Robert D. Atkinson and Philip J. Weiser, “A Third Way on Network Neutrality,” New Atlantis: A Journal of Technology & Society (Summer 2006): 50.
7. Jeffrey A. Hart, “The Net Neutrality Debate in the United States,” Journal of Information Technology & Politics 8, no. 4 (2011): 425.
8. “Building the Internet Toll Road,” Wired, February 26, 2006, https://www.wired.com/2006/02/building-the-internet-toll-road/. For a discussion about Free Press and Save the Internet coalition, see The Communicators, “Ben Scott on Net Neutrality,” C-SPAN, 2007, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ladtEC-G7pU.
9. Ernesto Laclau, On Populist Reason (London: Verso, 2005), 117.
10. Save the Internet! Independence Day, 2006, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWt0XUocViE. At various points throughout the net neutrality saga, industry groups funded “astroturf” organizations to help create the perception of popular agitation against net neutrality. One of the earliest of these was called Hands Off the Internet. See Meinrath and Pickard, “The New Network Neutrality,” 227.
11. “Your Own Personal Internet,” Wired, June 30, 2006, https://www.wired.com/2006/06/your-own-person/. Bill Herman, an intern at Public Knowledge, was the person responsible for the original recording of Senator Stevens’s rant.
12. The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, “Headlines—Internet,” Comedy Central video clip, July 2006, http://www.cc.com/video-clips/u010re/the-daily-show-with-jon-stewart-headlines—internet.
13. “Sen. Ted Stevens—Alaska,” Open Secrets, accessed October 28, 2018, https://www.opensecrets.org/members-of-congress/contributors?cid=N00007997&cycle=2008&type=C.
14. Peter Dahlgren, The Political Web: Media, Participation and Alternative Democracy (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 139.
15. Quoted in Christopher T. Marsden, Net Neutrality: Towards a Coregulatory Solution (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2010), 1.
16. Nancy Scola and Alex Byers, “FCC’s Win Cements Obama’s Internet Legacy,” Politico, June 14, 2016, https://politi.co/2TSdgaL.
17. “Google-Verizon Pact Worse Than Feared,” Free Press, August 9, 2010, https://www.freepress.net/news/press-releases/google-verizon-pact-worse-feared.
18. Marvin Ammori, “Google-Verizon Pact: Makes BP Look Good,” Huffington Post, August 10, 2010, https://www.huffingtonpost.com/marvin-ammori/google-verizon-pact-makes_b_677296.html.
19. Sergey Brin, “Search Engines, Technology, and Business” (lecture delivered at the University of California, Berkeley, October 3, 2005).
20. “Techies Score Victory on Net Neutrality,” NBC News, February 26, 2015, https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/internet/techies-score-victory-net-neutrality-n313406.
21. Craig Aaron, personal communication, December 4, 2018.
22. Battle for the Net, “We Are Team Internet,” accessed September 3, 2018, https://www.battleforthenet.com/teaminternet.
23. Brody Mullins and Gautham Nagesh, “Jostling Begins as FCC’s Net Neutrality Vote Nears,” Wall Street Journal, February 24, 2015.
24. Battle for the Net, accessed October 13, 2018, https://www.battleforthenet.com.
25. Bob Lannon, “What Can We Learn from 800,000 Public Comments on the FCC’s Net Neutrality Plan?” Sunlight Foundation, 2014, https://sunlightfoundation.com/2014/09/02/what-can-we-learn-from-800000-public-comments-on-the-fccs-net-neutrality-plan/.
26. Battle for the Net, “Sept. 10th Is the Internet Slowdown,” 2014, https://www.battleforthenet.com/sept10th/.
27. Fight for the Future, “Press Release: The Internet Slowdown by the Numbers,” September 11, 2014, http://tumblr.fightforthefuture.org/post/97225186398/press-release-the-internet-slowdown-by-the.
28. Ashley Killough, “Net Neutrality Protesters Confront FCC Chairman,” CNN, November 11, 2014, http://www.cnn.com/2014/11/11/politics/fcc-chairman-protesters/index.html.
29. Soraya Nadia McDonald, “John Oliver’s Net Neutrality Rant May Have Caused FCC Site Crash,” Washington Post, June 4, 2014, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/06/04/john-olivers-net-neutrality-rant-may-have-caused-fcc-site-crash/.
30. Robert Faris et al., “The Role of the Networked Public Sphere in the US Net Neutrality Policy Debate,” International Journal of Communication 10 (2016): 5849.
31. Amy Schatz, “FCC’s Wheeler on Viral Net Neutrality Video: ‘I Am Not a Dingo,’” Recode, June 13, 2014, https://www.recode.net/2014/6/13/11627962/fccs-wheeler-on-viral-net-neutrality-video-i-am-not-a-dingo.
32. Alex T. Williams and Martin Shelton, “What Drove Spike in Public Comments on Net Neutrality? Likely, a Comedian,” Washington, DC: Pew Research Center, 2014, http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/09/05/what-drove-spike-in-public-comments-on-net-neutrality-likely-a-comedian/.
33. @FCC, “We’ve been experiencing technical difficulties …,” Twitter, June 2, 2014, https://twitter.com/FCC/status/473565753463959552.
34. President Obama’s Statement on Keeping the Internet Open and Free—YouTube, November 10, 2014, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKcjQPVwfDk.
35. There has been some speculation as to why Obama intervened when and how he did. One theory is that passing net neutrality had been on Obama’s so-called f**k-it list, and now that the great distraction of the midterms was over, he could focus on this priority, which had remained dormant for much of his presidency.
36. “Overwhelming Bipartisan Majority Opposes Repealing Net Neutrality,” Washington, DC: Program for Public Consultation at the University of Maryland, 2017, http://www.publicconsultation.org/united-states/overwhelming-bipartisan-majority-opposes-repealing-net-neutrality/.
37. Elizabeth Stinson, “Day of Action: How Facebook, Google, and More Supported Net Neutrality,” Wired, July 12, 2017, https://www.wired.com/story/day-of-action-internet-protests-google-facebook-reddit/.
38. @HamillHimself, “Cute video Ajit ‘Aren’t I Precious?’ Pai—but you are profoundly unworthy 2 wield a lightsaber—a Jedi acts selflessly for the common man—NOT lie 2 enrich giant corporations. Btw—did you pay John Williams his royalty? @AjitPaiFCCorpShill #AJediYouAreNOT,” Twitter, December 16, 2017, https://twitter.com/hamillhimself/status/941984701085925376?lang=en.
39. Brian Feldman, “Ajit Pai Made a ‘Viral’ Video with a Wannabe Pizzagater as a Last-Ditch Attempt to Defend New Internet Rules,” New York Magazine, December 14, 2017, http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/12/ajit-pais-pizzagater-martina-markota-hates-net-neutrality.html; Tom McKay, “Ajit Pai Thinks You’re Stupid Enough to Buy This Crap [Update: One of the 7 Things Is Dancing with a Pizzagater],” Gizmodo, December 13, 2017, https://gizmodo.com/ajit-pai-thinks-youre-stupid-enough-to-buy-this-crap-1821277398.
40. Tony Romm, “Netflix CEO: Net Neutrality Is No Longer Our ‘Primary Battle,’” Recode, May 31, 2017, https://www.recode.net/2017/5/31/15720268/netflix-ceo-reed-hastings-net-neutrality-open-internet.
41. Klint Finley, “This Hearing May Decide the Future of Net Neutrality,” Wired, February 1, 2019, https://www.wired.com/story/this-hearing-decide-future-net-neutrality/.
42. Katharine Trendacosta, “Victory! California Passes Net Neutrality Bill,” Electronic Frontier Foundation, August 31, 2018, https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/08/victory-california-passes-net-neutrality-bill.
43. Karl Bode, “Why Feds Can’t Block California’s Net Neutrality Bill,” Verge, October 2, 2018, https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/2/17927430/california-net-neutrality-law-preemption-state-lawsuit.
44. Heath Kelly, “California Just Passed Its Net Neutrality Law. The DOJ Is Already Suing,” CNN Business, October 1, 2018, https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/01/tech/california-net-neutrality-law/index.html.
45. Christopher Hooton, “An Empirical Investigation of the Impacts of Net Neutrality,” The Internet Association, 2017, 3, https://internetassociation.org/publications/an-empirical-investigation-of-the-impacts-of-net-neutrality/.
46 “Malkia Cyril on Why Net Neutrality Is a Civil Rights Issue,” NBC News, December 8, 2017, https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/debunker/video/malkia-cyril-on-why-net-neutrality-is-a-civil-rights-issue-1112468547817.
47. “Civil Rights and Media Justice Leaders Join Internet-Wide Day of Action for Net Neutrality on July 12th,” Oakland: Center for Media Justice, July 12, 2017, https://centerformediajustice.org/2017/07/12/civil-rights-media-justice-leaders-join-internet-wide-day-action-net-neutrality-july-12th/.
1. William M. Emmons, “Franklin D. Roosevelt, Electric Utilities, and the Power of Competition,” Journal of Economic History 53, no. 4 (1993): 883.
2. Richard Martin, Coal Wars: The Future of Energy and the Fate of the Planet (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 17.
3. These approaches correspond to three general methods to contain monopolies in particular and commercialism in general, discussed in Victor Pickard, Democracy without Journalism? The Rise of the Misinformation Society (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019).
4. For an incisive analysis of America’s anti-monopoly movement, see Tim Wu’s recent book, The Curse of Bigness: Antitrust in the New Gilded Age (New York: Columbia Global Reports, 2018).
5. It is important to point out that these are not mutually exclusive measures; many would argue that we need to wield both antitrust and public interest regulation.
6. Michael O’Rielly, “Muni Broadband’s Ominous Threat to the First Amendment,” Federal Communications Commission, December 13, 2018, https://www.fcc.gov/news-events/blog/2018/12/13/muni-broadbands-ominous-threat-first-amendment.
7. Quoted in Emmons, “Franklin D. Roosevelt, Electric Utilities, and the Power of Competition,” 884.
8. For an excellent resource that includes maps and data about community/municipal broadband, see the Institute for Local Self-Reliance’s “Community Network Map,” Community Networks, January 2019, https://muninetworks.org/communitymap; Klint Finley, “Brits Approach (True) Speed of Light over Fiber Cable,” Wired, March 28, 2013, https://www.wired.com/2013/03/internet-at-the-speed-of-light/.
9. James K. Wilcox, “People Still Don’t Like Their Cable Companies,” Consumer Reports, August 8, 2018, https://www.consumerreports.org/phone-tv-internet-bundles/people-still-dont-like-their-cable-companies-telecom-survey/.
10. David Talbot, Kira Hessekiel, and Danielle Kehl, “Community-Owned Fiber Networks: Value Leaders in America,” Cambridge, MA: Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, 2017, http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:34623859.
11. Lisa Gonzalez, “Totals Are In: Comcast Spends $900K in Fort Collins Election,” Community Networks, December 9, 2017, https://muninetworks.org/content/totals-are-comcast-spends-900k-fort-collins-election.
12. “Municipal Broadband Is Roadblocked or Outlawed in 26 States,” Broadband Now, April 17, 2019, https://broadbandnow.com/report/municipal-broadband-roadblocks/.
13. Monica Anderson and John B. Horrigan, “Americans Have Mixed Views on Policies Encouraging Broadband Adoption,” Pew Research Center, April 10, 2017, http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/04/10/americans-have-mixed-views-on-policies-encouraging-broadband-adoption/.
14. Alex Shephard, “A Public Option for the Internet,” New Republic, May 8, 2018, https://newrepublic.com/article/148330/public-option-internet.
15. Evan Malmgren, “Could Vermont Become the First State with Universal Broadband?” Nation, October 26, 2018, https://www.thenation.com/article/could-vermont-become-the-first-state-with-universal-broadband/.
16. “Polling the Left Agenda,” Data for Progress, 2018, https://www.dataforprogress.org/polling-the-left-agenda/.
17. Roger Lowenstein, “The ‘Noble Art’ of Governing: A Practical Agenda for the House,” Washington Post, November 14, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/the-noble-art-of-governing-a-practical-agenda-for-the-house/2018/11/14/81150b1e-e787–11e8-b8dc-66cca409c180_story.html?utm_term=.c9c27725976a.
18. For further discussion of the challenges of respecting user privacy on public internet networks, see E. Casey Lide, “Balancing the Benefits and Privacy Concerns of Municipal Broadband Applications,” NYU Journal of Legislation & Public Policy 11, no. 3 (2007): 467–93; and Jay Stanley, “The Public Internet Option: How Local Governments Can Provide Network Neutrality, Privacy, and Access for All,” American Civil Liberties Union, March 2018, https://www.aclu.org/report/public-internet-option.
19. For a comprehensive overview of literature on regulatory captures, see Adam Thierer, “Regulatory Capture: What the Experts Have Found,” Technology Liberation Front, December 19, 2010, https://techliberation.com/2010/12/19/regulatory-capture-what-the-experts-have-found/.
20. Craig Aaron and Timothy Karr of Free Press, personal correspondence, July 27, 2018.
21. Jon Brodkin, “FCC’s Revolving Door: Former Chairman Leads Charge against Title II,” Ars Technica, April 14, 2015, https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/04/fccs-revolving-door-former-chairman-leads-charge-against-title-ii/.
22. Tim Karr, “FCC Commissioner Cashes in at Your Expense,” Common Dreams, May 14, 2011, https://www.commondreams.org/views/2011/05/14/fcc-commissioner-cashes-your-expense.
23. Even Mignon Clyburn, who was a staunch ally of consumer and public interest groups during her tenure as FCC commissioner from 2009 to 2018, was hired by T-Mobile in February 2019 to advise the company on its pending mega-merger with Sprint. See Brian Fung, “Mignon Clyburn, Former FCC Commissioner, Hired by T-Mobile to ‘Advise’ on Sprint Merger,” Washington Post, February 6, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/02/06/t-mobile-gains-powerful-ally-hiring-former-fcc-commissioner-advise-its-sprint-merger/?utm_term=.e60ca665841e.
24. As a congressional staffer, Victor Pickard experienced firsthand the embeddedness of corporate lobbyists in the halls of government power, and how this affected the net neutrality debate immediately after the Brand X decision. See “After Net Neutrality,” LSE Media Policy Project, July 18, 2016, http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/mediapolicyproject/2016/07/18/after-net-neutrality/, reprinted on Huffington Post, July 20, 2016, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/victor-pickard/after-net-neutrality_b_11043316.html.
25. Pickard, America’s Battle for Media Democracy, 218.
26. Victor Pickard, “The Return of the Nervous Liberals: Market Fundamentalism, Policy Failure, and Recurring Journalism Crises,” Communication Review 18, no. 2 (2015): 82–97; Dwayne Winseck and Jefferson D. Pooley, “A Curious Tale of Economics and Common Carriage (Net Neutrality) at the FCC: A Reply to Faulhaber, Singer, and Urschel,” International Journal of Communication 11 (2017): 2702–33.
27. Jedediah Purdy, “Neoliberal Constitutionalism: Lochnerism for a New Economy,” Law & Contemporary Problems 77, no. 4 (2014): 197.
28. This is discussed in further detail in Victor Pickard, “Toward a People’s Internet: The Fight for Positive Freedoms in an Age of Corporate Libertarianism,” in Blurring the Lines: Market-Driven and Democracy-Driven Freedom of Expression, ed. Maria Edström, Andrew T. Kenyon, and Eva-Maria Svensson (Gothenburg, Sweden: Nordicom, 2016), 61–68.
29. Susan Crawford, “First Amendment Common Sense,” Harvard Law Review 127 (2014): 2343–91.
30. Timothy B. Lee, “Verizon: Net Neutrality Violates Our Free Speech Rights,” Ars Technica, July 3, 2012, https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/07/verizon-net-neutrality-violates-our-free-speech-rights/.
31. Quoted in Susan Crawford, “The Sneaky Fight to Give Cable Lines Free Speech Rights,” Wired, December 4, 2018, https://www.wired.com/story/spectrum-comcast-telecom-fight-win-free-speech/.
32. Parts of the following draw from Victor Pickard, “Before Net Neutrality: The Surprising 1940s Battle for Radio Freedom,” Atlantic, January 29, 2015, https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/01/before-net-neutrality-the-surprising-1940s-battle-for-radio-freedom/384924/.
33. The concept of conjunctures was famously described by the Italian theorist Antonio Gramsci. See, for example: Antonio Gramsci, The Gramsci Reader: Selected Writings, 1916–1935, ed. David Forgacs (New York: New York University Press, 2000).
34. Pickard, America’s Battle for Media Democracy.
35. For an overview of possible policy interventions against platform monopolies, see Victor Pickard, “Breaking Facebook’s Grip,” Nation, May 21, 2018, 22–24; earlier digital version posted April 18, https://www.thenation.com/article/break-facebooks-power-and-renew-journalism/. See also Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power (New York: Public Affairs, 2019).
36. For an explication of digital feudalism, see Sascha Meinrath, James Losey, and Victor Pickard, “Digital Feudalism: Enclosures and Erasures from Digital Rights Management to the Digital Divide,” CommLaw Conspectus: Journal of Communications Law and Policy 19 (2011): 423–79.