Ethics Of Commitment To Net Neutrality- MyAssignment Help

Question: Discuss about the Ethics of Commitment to Net Neutrality. Answer: Introduction European Union has passed a regulation Regulation (EU) 2015/2120 for maintaining of net neutrality which is likely to benefit the Digital Single market. This would allow individuals to access as well as distribute internet content as per their choice. As per the EU rule, same internet usage provisions would be applied to all the individuals across Europe. The law restricts vendors from blocking, throttling, and discrimination of online services, application and content(Berleur Poullet, What Governance and Regulations for the Internet? Ethical Issues, 2002). Thus, internet service providers would not be able to prioritize the traffic or take decisions on who is to be provided certain service or who would be blocked. As per the law, specialized services have to satisfy certain quality requirements and safety measures for protection of users. Specialized services would not substitute internet service but would only be provided when sufficient network capacity exists. It should not in any case affect the availability of internet(Berleur, ETHICS AND Modes of GOVERNANCE of the Internet, 2009). TO enforce the regulation on the vendors, National Regulatory Authorities (NRAs) would be monitoring the developments in the market on traffic management, service quality, and other commercial agreements. Users have to be provided with open internet access service of good quality(Kjellqvist, 2011). Specific guidelines would be formulated by The Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications (BEREC) to assist NRA is assessing the inter aliaagreements, specialised services details, and commercial practices information such that common benchmarks could be developed and required enforcement decisions could be made(EU, 2016). Classical ethical theories There are certain classical ethical theories that may be used for analysis of the case such as: Moral absolutism which says that there are absolute standards that could be used for judging morality and efforts to be made by humans to attain higher standards. The theory considers certain actions as wrong and crime is considered as a crime regardless of different views. Consequentialism demand action to be judged on the basis of effect and total of good actions must exceed the total of evil. Good consequences suggest that the action is ethical as per this theory(SINGER, 1999) Utilitarianism defines certain essentials of utilities like maximization of good, provision of value through best outcome. According to this theory, business must consider everyone using their services as stakeholders(Baugher Weisbord, 2006). Virtue ethics identify disposition of an organization that should allow organization to do good to people, make use of their powers to do good, and practice good habits that will form the virtue of the business. Application of Theory The article talks about the practice of ethical codes on regulation on the internet through the practice of net neutrality. Ethical regulation of internet is possible only with a framework that protects the rights of individuals using internet and create rules for their security. To be able to protect the rights of the individuals using internet, net neutrality plays a crucial role(Astier, 2005). In case of its absence, network operators would use their discretion to create differentiation on services based on the payments made by users. For instance, internet user who is subscribing to free services may be faced with the lowered internet bandwidth or sow loading of the website on the pages. With the net neutrality rules established for regulation, the law ensures that all the individuals can enjoy same level of services and same quality as it demands all hosts to be treated equally(Chung Xing, 2011). When applying the classical theories of ethics like moral absolutism, Consequentialism, Utilitarianism, and virtue ethics certain interpretations on the article can be made: As per moral absolutism, high standards of morality must be maintained and as per the directive of EU, these standards are demanded through net neutrality by providing same level of quality to all individuals using internet services irrespective of their form of subscription. As per Consequentialism, an action is considered ethical when it has good consequences. The consequences of net neutrality would be good for all the individuals as they would be able to enjoy equal quality of service without any discrimination done against them for any reasons. Utilitarianism says that organizations should provide best standards of services to all users considering them all important stakeholders. Adhering to this principle, the EU la on net neutrality seeks defined level of qualities of services that the vendors must provide when providing internet services to their users. Virtue ethics identify good acts, good use of power and good habits to be used by organizations. In the net neutrality directive, this ethical standard is being considered by understanding the fact that if no governance was provided then companies providing internet and other communication services can actually misuse their power by blocking services for those who cant afford high costs and this way they can either block their services or can reduce their speeds. Net neutrality objects to this and prevents users from practicing these. Thus, most of the ethical principles defined in the theories discussed were positively adhered to in the net neutrality directive. However, there are more theories that can be contradictory or different from these ethical codes and thus, were not explored in the paper. These included Kantian ethics, Deontological theories, non-consequential theories, pragmatism and so on. The paper explored only those classical theories that the directive positively adhered to but there are certain ethical theories that actually contradict these principles and thus, it is difficult to determine which would be the right theory to use when making such decisions about ethical practices. For instance, pragmatists believe that goodness is decided by the profit generated out of the action. If this theory is applied in the case then net neutrality would actually stop vendors from gaining profits and thus, would be against the directive. Conclusions The report analysed the EU directive for net neutrality against the classical ethical principles like moral absolutism, Consequentialism, Utilitarianism, and virtue ethics. It was found that these ethical principles were considered and were supported by the EU directive for net neutrality through assurance of equal levels of internet services for public usage and provision of good quality services meeting a level of standard for these users. However, certain theories like pragmatism can actually oppose the ideas of net neutrality. References Astier, S. (2005). Ethical regulation of the Internet: the challenges of global governance. Sage Journals, 133-150. Baugher, D., Weisbord, E. (2006). Egoism, Justice, Rights, And Utilitarianism: Student Views Of Classic Ethical Positions In Business . Journal Of Academic And Business Ethics , 1-11. Berleur, J. (2009). Ethics And Modes Of Governance Of The Internet. University Faculties of Notre-Dame de la Paix. Berleur, J., Poullet, Y. (2002). What Governance and Regulations for the Internet? Ethical Issues. IFIP International Federation for Information Processing, 169-191. Chung, A., Xing, C. (2011). The Ethics of Net Neutrality. UC Davis. (2016, September 14). Our commitment to net neutrality. Retrieved from Digital Single Market: https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/open-internet-net-neutrality Kjellqvist, H. (2011). Ethically Regulating the Internet. Mlardalen University. SINGER, P. (1999). Practical Ethics . United States of America: Monash University.