Many observers immediately labeled Fox's block a violation of the principle of "network neutrality"—the idea that Internet service providers should allow subscribers to access all legal content online. Neutrality rules have been the subject of fierce debate in Washington, and activists are constantly on the lookout for perceived anti-neutrality maneuvering.
If Fox's move violated "neutrality," though, it wasn't in the way we've long defined that term. Advocates for net neutrality rules have mainly been concerned about the power that cable and phone companies can exert on the Internet. The theory is that in most local areas, broadband companies exist as monopolies or duopolies—you can get the Internet from your phone company or your cable company—and, therefore, are in a position to influence online content. What if, for instance, AT&T demanded that YouTube pay a surcharge every time a customer watches a video? To prevent such abuses, the Federal Communications Commission imposed Internet "openness" guidelines (PDF) in 2005, and since then regulators and lawmakers have been arguing about how to make those guidelines both permanent and enforceable.
But this Fox-Cablevision-Hulu scenario turns the neutrality debate on its head. Here, it wasn't the broadband company—Cablevision—that blocked customers' access to content. Instead, it was the content company, Fox, that imposed the ban. Why is that distinction important? Because while it's easy to think of justifications for imposing neutrality regulations on broadband companies, it's less clear how we should feel about imposing rules on content providers. Telecom companies are regulated by the FCC, and there's a long history of the government forcing "openness" rules on public communications infrastructure. If the government can prohibit phone companies from deciding whom you can and can't call, shouldn't we have a similar rule preventing ISPs from deciding what you can get on the Web?
Simeon Spearman on 16 Feb 12Only three news sites - CNN, Yahoo News and The New York Times - out of 22 appeared to use high levels of ad targeting, according to a Pew Research Center study. In these cases, 45 percent or more of the ads were different from one user to the next. Another three news sites - CBS, USA Today, and MSNBC - exhibited moderate levels of targeting where between 29 percent and 40 percent of the ads were different across users. Sites with low levels or no apparent targeting included FoxNews.com, WashingtonPost.com, Time.com, and Newsweek.com. When researchers revisited the sites in January, they found that two - latimes.com and theatlantic.com - showed slightly higher levels of ad targeting. "By contrast, highly targeted advertising is already a key component of the business model of operations such as Google and Facebook," the study found.
