Book Review: An Open Internet for All: Free Speech and Network Neutrality, by Dana D. Bagwell

Abstract

An Open Internet for All: Free Speech and Network Neutrality. Dana D. Bagwell. El Paso, Texas: LFB Scholarly Publishing, 2012. 162 pp. $20 pbk.Net has once again been all over the news in the past year. Between a controversial opinion by the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in the Verizon v. FCC case in 2014 and the equally controversial standards propagated by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in March 2015, something or somebody must bring order to the topic and its scholarship.The concept of net neutrality is both simple and extremely complicated. Dana D. Bagwell's book helps put the complex topic into perspective, especially incorporating the Internet into a discussion of free speech principles and the marketplace of ideas. The book does a solid job of tracing the legal and policy aspects of Internet regulation and the public policies behind attempts to control the Internet. The book goes back to the origins of the FCC and its role in developing laws and policies relating to an ever-changing world of communications.The author thoroughly explains such potentially abstract policy topics as dial-up modem regulations, broadband policy, and the difference between information services, telecommunications, and telecommunications services under Titles I and II of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. These regulatory schemes and controversies and the accompanying legal battles set the foundation for today's net neutrality rules-and the debate surrounding them.The book also painstakingly summarizes reams of FCC policies and federal laws on communications and dozens of court decisions. This is a unique topic that envelops all three branches of government.Bagwell writes,Since network neutrality rules have become the framework by which the FCC will regulate the Internet, it is imperative that the debate move from questioning whether network neutrality is good policy to whether network neutrality is good communication policy. In other words, what values does network neutrality guarantee from the perspective of free speech and expression?The author defers to, if not reveres, the work of several earlier scholars, principally Professor Tim Wu, who is credited with coining the term net neutrality in a 2003 article, and Lawrence Lessig, a prolific legal scholar on intellectual property matters. However, the author is most deferential to Jerome Barron, the eminent First Amendment scholar whose writings are repeatedly cited throughout the book and honored in the book's concluding sentence: that the rules of access discussed throughout the book could finally fulfill Barron's vision of a right of access to the media.As a conduit for content and access to and for media, Bagwell reiterates other scholars' arguments that the Internet is perhaps the most powerful communications tool ever created. …