Building Internet policy on history: lessons of the forgotten 1981 network neutrality debate

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe US-centric Internet history situates the start of the net neutrality debate around 2003, but a look at global Internet histories indicates otherwise. To wit: this case study of the forgotten net neutrality struggle that took place in France between 1979 and 1982. In 1978, the French PTT started “Minitel,” the world's first successful mass market online ecosystem. The Minitel experience prefigured most of the legal, economic, industrial, and other public policy issues we face today in cyberspace. The concept of network neutrality was explicitly debated by administrators and regulators – only to be rejected upon pressure from the incumbent print press industry, which foresaw its own impending demise and did all it could to hinder the development of open and neutral digital fora. Minitel has been derided by many scholars and policy wonks as the epitome of statism that precluded real and meaningful innovation from emerging from the edges. This article demonstrates instead that hindrances to net neutrality in France in the early 1980s were the result of private sector lobbying, not of PTT administrators. It provides a counter-narrative grounded in historical data, to fuel further thinking about what policies will better support private innovation over modern online platforms.