Abstract The US debate about net neutrality has been unusually contentious for a telecommunications regulatory issue, most recently culminating in a 2017 reversal of a 2015 decision to apply traditional telephone regulations, written for a monopoly era, to internet service providers. This article reviews this history, beginning 1956 when the government first imposed an industry boundary between transmission of information on the one hand, and the creation and processing of information on the other. This regulatory legacy remains embedded in US law and has led to some of the muddle. This article also examines the academic literature relating to net neutrality. On this, the answers found in the literature vary depending on assumptions made about technology, industry structure, and industry practices. When the answer to the question of whether regulations are beneficial is “it depends,” and the scenarios that give different answers are realistic, it would seem that the policy approach should favor applying competition and consumer protection laws that address problems when they occur rather than ex ante regulations, which would be certain to harm at least in some situations.

中文翻译：

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美国的网络中立政策和法规

摘要美国关于网络中立性的争论在电信监管问题上异常激烈，最近的一次高潮是在2017年撤销了2015年的一项决定，该决定将为垄断时代而写的传统电话法规应用于互联网服务提供商。本文回顾了这段历史，始于1956年，当时政府首先在一方面进行信息传输与另一方面对信息创建和处理之间施加了行业界限。这些监管遗留问题仍然根植于美国法律中，并导致了一些混乱。本文还研究了有关网络中立性的学术文献。因此，根据对技术，行业结构和行业实践的假设，文献中的答案会有所不同。