Think you have the right to speak freely via cellphones, websites
and social media? Well, the companies that provide you with access to
the Internet don’t.
The framers drafted the First Amendment as a check on
government
authority — not corporate power. But whether we’re texting friends,
sharing photos on Facebook, or posting updates on Twitter, we’re
connecting with each other and the Internet via privately controlled
networks.
(photo: watchingfrogsboil)
And the owners of these networks are now twisting the intent of the
First Amendment to claim the right to control everyone's online
information.
Right before the Fourth of July,
Verizon filed a brief
with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit that expressed this
intent in no uncertain terms. The brief was part of the telecom
company’s bid to overturn the Federal Communications Commission’s Net
Neutrality rules, which prohibit carriers from blocking or
discriminating against Internet users’ content.
In the brief, Verizon argues that the First Amendment gives the company the right to serve as the Internet’s editor-in-chief.
The First Amendment “protects those transmitting the speech of
others, and those who ‘exercise editorial discretion’ in selecting which
speech to transmit and how to transmit it,” the company’s attorneys
wrote. “In performing these functions, broadband providers possess
‘editorial discretion.’ Just as a newspaper is entitled to decide which
content to publish and where, broadband providers may feature some
content over others.”
By “content” Verizon means
all digital communications that
cross its wires, from photographs of your cousin’s backyard barbeque to
YouTube videos of human rights violations in Syria.
Verizon filed its brief quietly just before the July Fourth holiday,
but it has caught the attention of the Internet freedom community like a
skunk under the back porch.
This is not the first time Internet Service Providers (ISPs) have
suggested that they have a First Amendment right to stifle speech
online.
AT&T argued in 2010
that its role is similar to that of an editor who selects content and
speaks — and that it is not merely a conduit for the communications of
others.
This defense of corporate censorship is no idle threat but a pretext
for a full-scale takeover of the Internet — a move that first requires
killing off any consumer protections that stand in the way.
We live in a time when growing numbers of people watch television
programs, listen to music, create videos and share photographs via
Internet connections provided by private entities.
A 2011 report from
European Digital Rights
states that ISPs and other technology companies are fast becoming the
information cops of the world. The report paints a picture of an
emerging “censorship ecosystem” fueled by private entities that often
work hand in glove with governments.
This collusion serves both corporate and political interests. ISPs
are seeking new authority to interfere with user traffic, including
limiting access to the content of competitors like Netflix or shutting
down the accounts of users they charge with sharing too much media.
Governments are demanding that access providers help them
filter and police the Internet — and that they do so under a veil of secrecy.
The most dangerous threats to free speech today lie at this
intersection between corporate and political power. While businesses
might do many things better than governments, our government is at least
by definition directly accountable to the American people. So when
Verizon claims the right to decide who gets free speech on the Internet,
it’s making this claim as a benevolent despot, not as a representative
democracy.
The framers of the U.S. Constitution could not have foreseen a time
in which technology allowed more than a billion people to communicate
via mobile phones connected to the World Wide Web. Nor could they have
envisioned a world in which companies like Verizon, AT&T and Comcast
wield more authority over our free speech than a British monarch.
And yet the First Amendment has survived to this day in defense of
democracy’s most consequential right. People on both the left and right
value freedom of speech. Just days after Verizon filed its brief, a
diverse coalition of more than 1,000 groups and Internet dignitaries
joined together behind a
Declaration of Internet Freedom that establishes freedom of expression as its first principle.
But popular consensus behind free speech on the Internet is running
headlong into media giants like Verizon that want to suppress open
Internet culture.
Any claim that the First Amendment protects corporations — and not
people — is absurd. And it shows just how far some companies are willing
to go to control 21st century communications.
© 2012 Tim Karr
As the Campaign Director for Free Press and
SavetheInternet.com,
Karr oversees campaigns on public broadcasting and noncommercial media,
fake news and propaganda, journalism in crisis, and the future of the
Internet. Before joining Free Press, Tim served as executive director of
MediaChannel.org and vice president of Globalvision New Media and the
Globalvision News Network.
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