Dr. Christopher Ali is an assistant professor at the University of Virginia. He holds a Ph.D. from the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Ali is a former Federal Communications Commission intern and the author of the book “Media Localism: The Policies of Place,” which was published last month.
Dr. Ali will be talking about the future of local newspapers as part of the Demystifying Media lecture series on Friday in Allen Hall.
Prior to his visit to UO, Dr. Ali talked to the Emerald about the re-emerging issue of net neutrality and its potential effects on UO students.
Emerald: How do you define net neutrality?
Dr. Christopher Ali: Basically net neutrality is the idea that an internet service provider cannot discriminate against the type of content that flows through its wires. In other words they can speed up or slow down certain content because a company has paid them more or because they are charging access to different services at different rates. The idea is that the internet and the way we access the internet should be neutral.
Dr. Christopher Ali is an assistant professor at the University of Virginia and a former intern for the FCC.
E: How has the new Federal Communications Chairman, Ajit Pai, proposed to change net neutrality rules?
Dr. Ali: Pai hasn’t actually come out and said what he wants to do with net neutrality. He has said that he is against it. He has said it is costing people jobs, which doesn’t make sense.
What he has done is chip away at an idea called zero-rating. Zero-rating is the idea that a company can pay a mobile provider, like T-Mobile, so that the company’s data count won’t count against your data count. For example, Netflix could pay T-Mobile and then you could stream Netflix on your cell phone without it counting against your data, which is huge. Think about how much data video streaming takes. If you’ve ever falling asleep watching Netflix you know how much data that takes.
This idea of zero rating is against the spirit of net neutrality and what Pai has done is dropped all investigations into zero rating. So basically he has allowed zero-rating to happen where before it was in this sort of gray area. That’s one way that he has chipped away at net neutrality, but he hasn’t come out and said ‘this is how I’m going to pick apart net neutrality.’
E: What are the broad political trends in net neutrality?
Dr. Ali: The funny thing about net neutrality is that net neutrality really should not be a partisan issue. It really shouldn’t.
Republicans can look at it and say it promotes small business, because if you are a small business operator and you would suddenly have to start paying a lot more money to reach consumers, that really hampers small business.
Democrats like it because it is about freedom of speech, freedom of access and freedom to innovate.
In the last three years it has become a partisan issue, ever since President Obama came out in favor of net neutrality regulation, then suddenly it entered the Republican platform. Suddenly, Republicans were against net neutrality.
The Republican line is against regulation, against big government and against in any way the government intervening in private space.
E: So basically there have been statements in opposition to net neutrality from the Republicans but no concrete proposals?
Dr. Ali: Right, it’s going to be really hard to pull back on net neutrality because the courts have ruled on it as well. The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals has said twice that the FCC has authority over this and only a year ago ruled that the FCC’s net neutrality rules are constitutional.
It’s going to take a lot of work for net neutrality rules to change.
E: Who stands to benefit the most from change in the current net neutrality rules?
Dr. Ali: Internet service providers 100 percent. Especially the big ones: Comcast, Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, New Charter.
These are the companies that will be benefitting from it because it means that they can start discriminating. What internet companies want the most is to be able to treat the internet like a cable subscription package. They would be able to provide a basic package with say email and access to google, but if you want social media you have to pay another $5 a month, if you want international news with BBC and Al-Jazeera that’s going to cost you an extra $10 a month and then there would be a premium package where you get Netflix and all the video streaming. But say if you are on Comcast you might get the Xfinity for free.
What they want to do is treat the internet like a cable subscription, because that is going to be hugely profitable for them, and without net neutrality rules they can do that.
Without net neutrality rules Comcast can charge you for access to Facebook. They can also charge Facebook access to you.
E: Who are some of the biggest proponents of net neutrality?
Dr. Ali: President Obama and Tom Wheeler the previous chairman of the FCC. You have public interest groups like Free Press and Public Knowledge, Common Cause, all these public interest groups are really in favor of net neutrality.
Small business is generally in favor of net neutrality. Any internet start up, but also the big internet companies.
Google is an interesting case because they initially led the charge for net neutrality and in the past few years they have backed off. My hypothesis, is that they are so big they can afford to pay the ransom if net neutrality goes away
Who really led the charge was Etsy and EBay. Can you imagine if you are an Etsy person and all of a sudden you have to pay more just to get to Etsy just so you can sell the goods you are selling anyways?Etsy became a big net neutrality advocate kind of out of the blue.
Netflix is also a big champion of net neutrality, but they too, I think, have become so rich in the past few years that if it turns out that if net neutrality was done away with they could afford to pay whatever Comcast wants.
In fact, they did.
We had a net neutrality gray area between 2014 and 2015 and in that time Comcast actually slowed down Netflix’s speed in order for Netflix to have to pay Comcast this paid prioritization fee.
While it is certainly in Google’s and Netflix’s favor to have net neutrality on the books, they can afford to live in a world without net neutrality. A lot of these other internet based businesses can’t.
E: What impact does net neutrality have on the internet experience of the average college student?
Dr. Ali: At the very basic it keeps your Netflix subscription fee from going up. Imagine if Netflix had to pay every single internet service provider a hefty fee to reach you fast. They would be able to afford that only by passing the fee on to the consumers. So then your Netflix subscription goes from $8.99 to $10.99.
But then, say you as a college student you get internet for free in your dorm, but maybe your university says, ‘you know what you get your basic internet for free but if you want to top it up you have to pay more.’
At the very least for college students they should be worried about this because they consume a huge amount of video: YouTube, Hulu, Amazon Prime.
College students don’t watch TV anymore. Most of their screens are broadband based.
Without net neutrality it is going to cost you more.
E: What else do you think college students should understand?
Dr. Ali: When I teach my classes on media policy and law one of the things I try to teach them is the idea that, as boring as it sounds, media policy matters. It matters on the same policy level as health care, as education policy, as foreign affairs policy, because without media policy you can’t get any other of your policies done. This is something I learned from former FCC commissioners like Nicholas Johnson and Michael Copps who preached this belief.
I get frustrated that a lot of times these issues don’t make it into the news. At times they get so bogged down in jargon that it is hard to understand, but this stuff really does matter. It matters from Netflix to Facebook.
We thought we won this fight but it turns out that we didn’t. We need to keep awareness up and keep the conversation going.
Dr. Christopher Ali is a former intern for the FCC.