Net neutrality | Public Libraries | Access
A Q&A with NYPL president Tony Marx and associate director of information policy Greg Cram
By
The FCC will vote on a measure
today that would repeal net neutrality and pave the way for the end of
the free, open internet as we’ve always known it. Librarians aren't
happy about it.
Yesterday, The Verge published an op-ed
written by the heads of the New York Public Library, the Brooklyn
Library, and the Queens Library systems, which called the measure
“appalling,” and argued that the end of an open internet would
contribute to inequality of education and opportunity, widening “the
already yawning digital divide.” Later, in a phone call, the New York
Public Library’s CEO and president Anthony Marx and associate director
of information policy Greg Cram broke the issue down further, explaining
exactly which library resources an open internet protects, who would be
hurt the most by net neutrality’s rollback, and why handing the
internet to ISPs could threaten the basic foundation of American
democracy.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
What stake do public libraries have in this issue?
Greg Cram: So, for fiscal year 2017 [the
New York Public Library] provided 3.1 million computer sessions — and
that’s sessions across all of the branches — using 4,700 computers. And
in addition to that, we provided 3 million wireless sessions. For the
first quarter of fiscal year 2018 we had 16.2 million pageviews on our
digital collections.
Anthony Marx: That gives us a little bit
of the sense of the scale of how much of the library goes across wires,
and the simple fact is that the poorest of New York rely on the library
as the only place they can go and get free use of computers and free
Wi-Fi. It’s one of the reasons why the library is the most visited civic
institution in New York. We have also, in recent years, been lending
people what we call hot spots, which are Wi-Fi boxes they can take home,
typically for a year. That gives them digital access at home —
broadband access — which something like 2 million New Yorkers can’t afford and don’t have.
We’re still doing thousands of those. We’d like to do more and we’re
exploring how to do more, because in this day and age, if you don’t have
internet access that works and goes fast enough, you can’t do your
homework, you can’t do research, you can’t apply for jobs, you can’t find jobs.
