The US Justice Department is suing California for trying to bring back net neutrality – neither is completely in the wrong

If ISPs can give preferential treatment to content creators with whom they have a commercial relationship, how will that affect what internet users consume, what they think – and even how they vote?

The White House is evidently planning to hold firm on net neutrality.

Earlier this year, the Trump administration ditched rules established by President Obama, thereby – in principle – giving internet service providers more power over what people see and do online. Now, an attempt by the state of California to restore the old regime has been met immediately with threats of legal action by the federal justice department.

As a matter of law, the US attorney Jeff Sessions may well be right to argue that individual states do not have the right to regulate issues which by their nature are inherently pan-American. Then again, if a single nation can try to legislate on what is a global issue, why not a state with a population of 40 million?

Either way, the issue of net neutrality has become totemic – no longer just a matter of interest to nerds, or hardened free speech activists; but one of the many issues on which America now divides down party lines. No wonder the White House is standing up to the challenge laid down by the Golden State.

The argument in favour of net neutrality rules revolves around the contention that we are essentially all equals when it comes to the internet, and that ISPs should not be allowed to decide that one piece of data can reach us more quickly than another – or be able to block material on purely commercial grounds.

Those who argue against net neutrality tend to suggest that the level playing field discourages innovation and investment. They point to the rise of the tech giants in the years before Obama’s regulatory regime was enacted in 2015; and they argue that smaller ISPs in particular – those which often serve rural locations – need to have greater commercial freedom if they are to roll out broadband services across the US.

Though neither side in this polarised debate would admit it, there is a degree of merit in both sides of the argument. The idea that a big corporate should determine what we can access online is plainly unnerving to most people. Nevertheless, public concern around the rise of deliberate “fake news” and online meddling in significant elections has put internet regulation firmly on the policy agenda. That is as true in the UK as it is in the US.

If content platforms such as Facebook and Twitter are facing calls to take greater responsibility for the material they are disseminating to users, why not give ISPs the power – at source – to decide what consumers can see? They are already under an obligation to block illegal material, after all. If ISPs are able to make those decisions for commercial reasons, won’t that eventually mean there is greater choice for individuals because the services they use – improved thanks to increased investment – are better and more accessible?

Perhaps much of this is already rather moot. For those who argue against any regulation of the internet, the game is already up. Huge swathes of the online world are subject to just the same kind of regulation as their offline equivalents. Likewise, the idea that the web isn’t hugely commercialised is absurd.

However, as the polarisation of the debate demonstrates, moves to end net neutrality have taken on their own importance in large part because the policy is tied so strongly to the current president. Campaigners oppose his plans because they believe that ISPs should not have the power to determine user choice. But there is also an underlying anxiety that the commercialisation of service provision is more likely to have nefarious consequences because America is at its most divided for decades.

If ISPs can give preferential treatment to content creators with whom they have a commercial relationship, how will that affect what internet users consume, what they think – and even how they vote?

It has become abundantly clear in the last two or three years that the internet can be weaponised for political ends. Net neutrality is one way to reduce the potential for the web to be bought, commercial as it already may be. California’s challenge to the White House is no hippie protest, but a hard-headed protest against a form of deregulation that is no friend to democracy.