The Writers Guild of America, East, is endorsing a proposed New York City Council resolution urging the Federal Communications Commission to adopt net neutrality standards for internet service providers.
The FCC is considering a rule that would bar generally bar internet service providers from giving video and other content from favored providers a faster path to consumers’ desktops than other legal content.
In prepared testimony for a New York City Council hearing Friday, Lowell Peterson, executive director of WGAE, warns that without a “net neutrality” guarantee, a relatively small number of “mega companies” might come to control access to content on the internet not because they provide better content “people prefer, but because they control the flow of data on the net.”
He claims that if the internet is controlled “by powerful corporate entities” writers “creative voices” could be lost.”
“Open access to the internet gives people many more opportunities to learn, laugh and to understand,” he says in the testimony.
Writers and independent producers have been concerned about maintaining the internet as a distribution alternative for content that they suggest is getting more difficult to get aired on TV networks and cable.
Some internet service providers and legislators have opposed any FCC action, arguing that it represents regulation of an internet that has thrived by being open and that there is little evidence of problems with internet service providers favoring some content over other content.
