Even though the term Net Neutrality has only been around since 2008, the principals and debate behind the term have been around for quite some time. This goes back all the way to the telegram which was labeled as a common carrier, meaning it is a public utility and one telegram could not be treated differently from another. The same treatment was later extended to the PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network) which is the network and infrastructure behind every telephone call made. In the primordial, dial-up, days of the Internet, public perception labeled the internet as more of a commercial service than the ubiquitous thing it has become today. This wouldn’t stay true for long as by the mid-1990s the internet had become a household commonality. In 1994 American politicians started to take note, including Al Gore. Gore was concerned that the internet, as it was then regulated, wouldn’t permit “everyone to compete with everyone else”. The battle for the internet began in earnest in 2004 when the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) took the side of (the then unnamed principal) Net Neutrality and created four non-discrimination principals: Freedom to …show more content…
v. Federal Communications Commission DC case the DC Circuit Court determined that the FCC had no right to force their principals on internet service providers if they aren’t defined as common carriers. After this ruling, a debate erupted over whether or not to attempt to classify internet service providers as common carries so that they could be regulated better by the FCC. After much deliberation, drama and controversy, the FCC voted to reclassify the internet as a common carrier under title II of the 1934 Communications Act. Seemingly this would be the end of the story of the struggle for Net Neutrality in our country as a set of principals to enforce it are in place and there is a governing body with the authority to enforce them. However, that is far from the