The Study Of U.S. Net Neutrality Regulation:Context, Essence And Inspiration

The success of diverse Internet applications, such as weibo, search engine, auction sites, Internet game, VoIP, P2P etc., mainly rely on the open and inter-connect characteristics of Internet, which can support people to form a social network and create various contents. However, working as the role of a gatekeeper, the network service provider inevitably controls the applications and contents which access to their network. Network neutrality regulation relates to the future of Internet, and is the major challenge of communication policies in 21th century.Network neutrality is an extremely complicated concept, and isn't easy to be defined precisely and concisely. The universal perspective on the essence of network neutrality in U.S. academic is that network service providers should equally treat all the legal contents, applications and attachments on the network without any discrimination to those that aren't affiliated to its own or partners. In the peripherals, network neutrality mainly concentrates on three important discrimination behaviors, namely, blocking, degrading and prioritizing. The idea of network neutrality comes from common carriage, universal service, open access and technology neutrality.Two important transformation periods have been undergone in the enforcement of network neutrality regulation in U.S. The first one is the moderate regulation period during the Presidency of George W. Bush, and the other one is the intensive regulation period in the Presidency of Obama. By focusing on the proposals from FCC and senators, as well as referring to the European Union, this thesis strives to expose the basic characteristics of U.S. network neutrality regulations from the two different regulation periods. That is, administration execution in advance is stressed in regulation ideas; regulation authority and gaming for parties'interest are reflected in main body of regulation; promoting competition in domestic market and ensuring the dominance to global Internet are emphasized in the regulation objective; case-by-case adjudications is focused in the regulation manner.The essence of U.S. network neutrality regulation is the crucial focal point to deeply understand the U.S. Internet regulation. The three theoretical parameters based on the political economy of communication suggest that from the perspective of commodification, the network neutrality regulation in U.S. is an institutional arrangement of various kinds of discrimination caused by the traffic commercialization, and is the extension of neo-liberal economy in the 20th century. From the view of point of spatialization, the network neutrality regulation of U.S. is the regulation guarantee to maintain the vertical and horizontal integration of commercial power in cyberspace. By executing double standards to the global and national interests, it is also recognized as a diplomatic strategy design of the so-called'Internet Freedom'. From the perspective of structuration, network neutrality regulation shows the active effort of U.S. in the aspect of maintaining universal access to Internet service, and also reveals the institutional gaming of interest bodies on the idea of network regulation.The reason of the universal controversy on the U.S. network neutrality is mainly because current fragmented communication policies are unable to adapt to the current media-integration era. Although the problem consciousness on this issue is not very intensive in our country, the discrimination problem does exist unavoidably. The related regulation text is also very scarce. The network neutrality regulation of U.S. has a very valuable implication to our country, such as dealing well with the balance between ethical right and market power, free flowing of information and security of network sovereignty, macro-regulation and micro-regulation, before-regulation and after-regulation etc.. Based on the OSI, our country should try to design its regulations on network neutrality from horizontal and vertical aspects. In the horizontal aspect, the goverment regulation should be strengthened so as to ensure the availability of interconnection and universal service. In the vertical aspect, reasonable and unreasonable practices should be distinguished clearly so as to guarantee the openness of access and creativity on the network.