eBay tested the utility of their applications directly with consumers via the open Internet without first paying significant costs for transmission or negotiating with network operators. These applications resulted in huge market success, consumer benefit, and encouraged further innovation in Internet services. Now, however, network operators can, if they choose, manage networks to promote certain websites, services, and applications, while blocking or slowing others. They may seek to prioritize their own services and slow the transmission of competing traffic or attempt to increase profits by charging individual and institutional users based on the content and services they use. ISPs may not charge users directly to view websites but rather charge service and content providers for access to end users of the Internet. These providers will then pass those costs along to end users in the form of price hikes or new charges to view content. The codification of net neutrality principles will ensure that network operators, which offer Internet access directly to the general public, do not engage in discriminatory practices that inflate prices and stifle innovation on the Internet. The goal of net neutrality is to ensure that citizens have a public platform to interact thus, it makes sense that net neutrality rules apply to network operators that provide broadband Internet access directly to the general public. In contrast, operators of “private networks”—such as university networks, libraries, coffee shops, and retail establishments—should not be subject to such rules because they do not provide Internet access to the public at large. Private network operators manage closed networks designed to serve the particular interests of their patrons. The FCC has long held that operators of private networks shall not be subject to the same regulations as commercial ISPs, and there is no indication that the FCC believes it is necessary to apply net neutrality to principles to entities other than commercial providers that offer broadband Internet access to the general public.1 The Cost of Success: How Developments in Internet Technology Created the Current Threat to Net Neutrality A primary reason why net neutrality has become an issue in recent years results from technological changes in the delivery of Internet services. During the days of dial-up service, providers were subject to certain “common carrier” RLI 273 10 The Importance of Net Neutrality to Research Libraries in the Digital Age ( C O N T I N U E D ) DECEMBER 2010 RESEARCH LIBRARY ISSUES: A BIMONTHLY REPORT FROM ARL, CNI, AND SPARC Net neutrality was a founding principle of the Internet’s original architecture.