This week saw many news websites draw attention to new rules, which came into force on June 11 2018, will allow internet service providers to choose which internet traffic to give priority to. This, the commentators say, is the beginning of the end of “net neutrality”. But actually the internet has long been run in a way which is far from neutral. Since the early days of the web, and increasingly in recent years, weaknesses in the legal framework governing the use of the internet’s domain name system have allowed some US government agencies to confiscate private property without proper…
Net neutrality died this week, but was the net really ever neutral?
