For decades now, the Internet has thrived with minimal regulation. As it increasingly moves from a fringe medium to the primary one through which business, entertainment and ideas are carried on and exchanged, the threat of regulation looms large. To preserve what is seen as a democratic space that provides an even playing field to all using it, Internet and media rights groups have proposed guidelines that would protect it for the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to adopt.
These protections form a sort of Internet Bill of Rights and the concept is commonly referred to as "Net Neutrality."
On October 22, 2009, the FCC issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking for a set of rules inspired by Net Neutrality, but last week, one rights group, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), launched a letter-signing campaign from realnetneutrality.org, where they ask supporters to "tell the FCC: Don't Let Hollywood Hijack the Internet."
Buried in the language of the FCC's proposed rules is a loophole which states that the Open Internet principles outlined "do not… apply to activities such as the unlawful distribution of copyrighted works."
The EFF argues that the entertainment industry has used that terminology to "pressure Internet service providers around the world to act as copyright cops—to surveil the Internet for supposed copyright violations, and then censor or punish the accused users."
A central goal of Net Neutrality as proposed by the rights groups has been to prevent corporations from acting as Internet sheriffs and taking Net justice into their own hands. "So why does the FCC's version of Net Neutrality specifically allow them to do so?" the EFF asks.
