Adeus à utopia digital da internet: o sonho acabou

Abstract

According to the principle of net neutrality, internet service providers must adopt an isonomic and non-discretionary treatment to all content that circulates through the global network. In the arena of internet governance, documentary researches that take national information policies as a corpus reveal the refusing of this old principle. This paper aims at discussing the socioeconomic and political consequences of the ongoing decline of net neutrality. The analysis reveals that this paradigmatic change represents a radical transformation that increasingly reduces the open and plural character of the global network, as well as drastically limits freedom of expression, the diversity of voices, knowledge and cultures in the digital universe. Faced with this reality, the naively optimistic academic discourses that propagate a creed in the redemptive ideal of the worldwidwide web become meaningless. We are witnessing the decline of the digital utopia of the Internet.