School Librarians Weigh in on Net Neutrality
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Lauren Barack -- School Library Journal, 10/26/2009
With the Federal Communication Commission’s (FCC) decision last week to consider how to protect—and regulate—the free nature of the Internet, the battle over Net neutrality went into high gear, and librarians, of course, were in the mix.“I certainly wouldn’t want a vendor deciding what students should—or shouldn’t—read,” says Randy Meyer, a library teacher at FA Day Middle School in Newton, MA. “When it comes to research and information, that’s where we should be able to help them learn how to make good choices, rather than have them made for them.”
School, public, and academic librarians have long supported the concept that carriers should not be allowed to make the decisions on what sites, services, and other sources the public can access.
As soon as the FCC’s decision went live, Twitter was abuzz with support for regulators who want to create guidelines on how to manage and maintain transparency and order as users negotiate the Web. To them, “an open Internet benefits all,” says Camila Alire, president of the American Library Association in a statement.
Yet for some in rural areas where wireless is the only access point, download speeds can be so slow that, in effect, they are already being limited to what information they can and cannot access.
“Trying to watch YouTube or even network news video is a process and frequently an impossibility,” Debra Kay Logan (pictured), a librarian and media specialist at Mount Gilead (OH) High School, wrote by email. “To get the kind of download speeds people routinely take for granted in town is cost prohibitive,” says Logan, who supports Net neutrality.
That expense already creates a non-neutral playing field; Net neutrality could actually raise pricing even more as Internet service providers (ISPs), such as AT&T, say that if they can’t charge for premium services, such as high-bandwidth downloads like movies, they might be forced to increase flat rates for everyone.
Still, the primary concern for those who support Net neutrality is not higher rates, but ISPs being allowed to decide which service or site is reachable—and which isn’t. That potential, to restrict the control of information, is what children and school librarians want regulated first and foremost.
“As a consumer myself, I pay for the access, not the parenting,” Gretchen Hams-Caserotti, head of children’s services at Darien (CT) Library wrote by email. “I want the choice. I want my choice to be free and clear, not filtered, not weighted and not modified.”
