Nowadays, no one has doubts that mainly the digital computer technologies and Internet define the future of human communication. Although the traditional producers of the printed media like dictionaries, books and magazines do not want to accept such development of the events, the printed media becomes more and more diluted with a digital one. At the same time, its classification with regard to the peculiarities of the Internet services becomes a timely issue.
Can one answer properly if Internet is an information or telecommunication service? With regard to Telecommunications Act of 1996, any average person as well as the scientists or politicians can define that the above mentioned notions do not mean the same. Telecommunication services as the common carriers are subjected to more regulations. At the same time, many evidences were used at the Supreme Court in 2005 and later by some other representatives to prove that Internet should be classified as the informational service with generally accessible information. A nice example for that is the development of the digital advertising and publishing that was estimated as 40 % of the business revenues among the American publishers in 2013. At the same time, the online information is less time consuming as it is on-hand for every person, who has a computer, laptop or smartphone nowadays. However, if telecommunication services carry public information, a blog can be hardly equaled to the mass media because the information that it provides is not always credible and unbiased. Moreover, the responsibilities carried by the authors are also different.
Internet is full of the information that can be searched and obtained by any representative of the modern digital era. However, the most important points about it are that it is based on the human interaction and do not imply the strict responsibility for distribution of the false information. So can we can ne consider this interactive type of media as telecommunication service? The most of the evidences prove that no.
Works Cited
Jacobson, Roni. “Nobody Is Neutral When It Comes to Web Neutrality”. Scientific American, 27 May, 2014. Web. 12 Aug. 2014. <http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/nobody-is-neutral-when-it-comes-to-net-neutrality/>
Moses, Lucia. “As Digital Grows, Publishers Say Print Media Buyers Are Getting Cut Out of the Action”. AdWeek, 3 Nov. 2013. Web. 12 Aug. 2014. <http://www.adweek.com/news/press/digital-grows-publishers-say-print-media-buyers-are-getting-cut-out-action-153573>
Very important discussion. So do you feel that internet service providers should be able to designate “fast lanes” for websites that can pay an additional fee? How does production of biased information (like your example of blogs) lead you to believe that the internet should be classified as an information service rather than a telecommunication service and therefore subject to less regulation?