Professor Dawn Nunziato, Professor Enrique Armijo, Professor Kevin Werbach, Professor James
Grimmelmann, Professor Stuart Benjamin, and Berin Szoka.
The days when print newspapers and magazines were the primary sources of news, information and discussion of important topics are long gone. The Internet — via blogs, social media or news websites — is the pipeline for a growing share of speech protected by the First Amendment. The best path for ensuring the Internet remains a conduit for free speech is the topic of heated debate.
At the symposium “First Amendment Networks: Issues in Net Neutrality,” scholars and think tank policy analysts discussed whether the policy known as “Net Neutrality” is the best path forward for regulators. The event was hosted by UNC School of Law’s First Amendment Law Review, the Center for Media Law and Policy and the UNC chapter of the American Constitution Society Friday, Oct. 24.
Net Neutrality advocates argue that the Federal Communications Commission should prevent Internet service providers from blocking or raising prices on different types of online content. They argue that Net Neutrality is necessary to prevent providers from exercising too much control over the shape of the Internet and its contents. Critics of Net Neutrality say that the policies could thwart the growth of the Internet by placing burdensome regulations on an emerging industry and that content providers have not and will not arbitrarily censor content. The topic has First Amendment implications because service providers could argue that the government is requiring them to carry messages that they do not agree with over their networks.
Attendees, including law and journalism students, heard from a broad variety of perspectives. The event started with a keynote address from Marvin Ammori, an attorney and Future Tense Fellow with the New America Foundation. Keeping with the event’s focus on First Amendment issues, Ammori argued that the current First Amendment legal framework is ill-suited to the Net Neutrality debate. Instead, Ammori says, courts should look at Net Neutrality as a way to promote First Amendment values.
“What we want to see is government intervention to encourage or to permit us to communicate in a way that doesn’t prefer one kind of content over another,” Ammori said.
A morning panel featured think tank analysts Sarah Morris and Berin Szoka and George Washington University law professor Dawn Nunziato. While Morris and Nunziato supported Net Neutrality, Szoka, from the group TechFreedom, said that the proponents have failed to produce evidence of censorship from Internet service providers.
“There is no record,” Szoka said.
The afternoon panel featured discussion from professors Enrique Armijo, Stuart Benjamin, James Grimmelmann and Kevin Werbach on the possible routes the Federal Communications Commission might take in addressing the Net Neutrality issue.
Event organizers and UNC law faculty were pleased with the lively speeches and panel discussions.
“We were really happy to have a variety of interests here because it made for a more lively and nuanced debate,” says First Amendment Law Review Symposium co-editor Robert El-Jaouhari 3L.
“It was a really robust and interesting discussion,” Laura Burkett 3L, First Amendment Law Review Symposium co-editor, says.
“I thought it was a fantastic symposium,” says Professor David Ardia of the Center for Media Law and Policy, who also serves as the First Amendment Law Review’s faculty advisor.
Ardia spoke of the topic’s importance going forward.
“Decisions that we make today regarding how we are going to regulate Internet services are going to have a long-lasting impact on future generations, so it is important that we have a reasoned debate."
-November 12, 2014