Virtual Freedom: Net Neutrality and Free Speech in the Internet Age

by Dawn C. Nunziato

Communications giants like Google, Comcast, and AT&T enjoy increasingly unchecked control over speech. As providers of broadband access and Internet search engines, they can control online expression. Their online content restrictions―from obstructing e-mail to censoring cablecasts―are considered legal because of recent changes in free speech law. In this book, Dawn Nunziato criticizes recent changes in free speech law in which only the government need refrain from censoring speech, while companies are permitted to self-regulate. By enabling Internet providers to exercise control over content, the Supreme Court and the FCC have failed to protect the public's right to access a broad diversity of content. Nunziato argues that regulation is necessary to ensure the free flow of information and to render the First Amendment meaningful in the twenty-first century. This book offers an urgent call to action, recommending immediate steps to preserve our free speech rights online.

212 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2009

Reviews

[Bryan · Rating 3 out of 5]

required reading

[Ian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Virtual Freedom: Net Neutrality and Free Speech in the Internet Age by Dawn Nunziato is an informative book that tells its readers about the rising issue of net neutrality. Net neutrality is a term that describes an internet free of discrimination to websites from broadband providers despite the contents of their websites. In this book, Nunziato describes the pinnacle of our freedoms of speech, expression, and especially consumerism: the internet. She makes a very good point to convince the reader that if precautions are not taken in regulation of net neutrality, our freedoms will be stamped out by big business.
Overall, I enjoyed the book very much. Nunziato, being a professor of law, definitely knows her stuff. She explains why it is our right to have a free internet given to us by the Constitution itself. The book is very informational and gives the readers a very detailed look into the issue of net neutrality and the problems a world without it would bring. Overall, it is a very good book that gave me a lot of information that I will use in my upcoming research paper.

[Alexander · Rating 2 out of 5]

Biased, poorly-written alarmist pamphlet promoting net neutrality. Work of a demagog rather than a scholar.
Nunziato makes her (rather weak) case with numerous logical fallacies, without seriously addressing arguments of the opposition.

You’d be better off reading just a Wikipedia piece on the topic.