Net Neutrality (noun): noun: the principle that Internet service providers should enable access to all content and applications regardless of the source, and without favoring or blocking particular products or websites.
What consumer isn’t for openness and freedom of choice? Therefore anyone, except the businesses that want to charge for access to consumers, Internet speed and more, must be for net neutrality. And anyone who is skeptical about putting the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in charge of Internet “fairness” must be shilling for big business.
That’s the narrative being pushed by HBO’s John Oliver, by much of the media and by groups such as Free Press, via savetheinternet.com.
And now, according to this narrative, the FCC is turning against the people to satiate big business. Recently, the FCC voted to overturn Obama administration era rules forcing Internet service providers (ISPs) to be regulated by the FCC’s net neutrality rules. The 2-1 vote reversed a 2015 vote that reclassified Internet service as a public utility under Title II of the Communications Act of 1934—at the time many argued that only Congress could give the FCC this power. (The FCC now has a public comment period open before this change is finalized. They have received more than two million comments already—click here to add yours.)
When fully staffed, the FCC is directed by five commissioners who are nominated by the president of the United States and confirmed by the Senate for five-year terms—except when filling an unexpired term. The U.S. president decides which commissioner will serve as chairman. Only three commissioners can be members of the same political party, so the FCC sways between three members of one party and two from the other depending on who is in the White House. Right now, however, there are two vacancies, so it’s two Republicans to one Democrat.
As the FCC moves to give up its reclassification of ISPs as a public utilities, Save the Internet says, “Net Neutrality is the basic principle that prohibits internet service providers like AT&T, Comcast and Verizon from speeding up, slowing down or blocking any content, applications or websites you want to use. Net Neutrality is the way that the internet has always worked.” But the thing is net neutrality isn’t how the Internet “has always worked.” The FCC’s rules weren’t enacted until 2015.
Ajit Pai, the current head of the FCC, argues that rules enforcing net neutrality hamper job growth and discourage investment. For this reason, in a statement, the FCC said it expected its proposed changes to “substantially benefit consumers and the marketplace.” It also said that, before the rules were changed in 2015, the FCC helped to preserve a “flourishing free and open internet for almost 20 years.”
Though popular sentiment, driven by media reports, appears to be behind net neutrality, some are skeptical of giving government this power, as government power tends to grow. (I feel so strongly about freedom that I actually wrote a novel called Kill Big Brother that shows how to get it done right.) Critics of net neutrality are skeptical because, though net neutrality can sound like a protection of Internet freedom, and ideally it should be, past experience tells us it could lead to a dampening of free speech.
This is what happened with television and radio. Content-based regulation of television and radio has been upheld by the Supreme Court because there is a limited number of frequencies for non-cable television and radio stations, therefore the government is permitted to regulate radio and TV with licenses. In this way, the Supreme Court determined the FCC could restrain radio and TV broadcasters, though only on a content-neutral basis. The problem of scarcity does not allow the FCC to infringe on the First Amendment, but some at the FCC saw this as a chance to define what “content-neutral” entailed. The Fairness Doctrine, which President Ronald Reagan’s FCC terminated, was an offshoot of this line of thinking. It allowed the government to decide what was content neutral. This allowed the FCC to fine radio and TV stations, or even to revoke their licenses, if it didn’t think broadcasts were fair and balanced; as a result, many radio stations simply stayed out of politics. It is no accident that conservative talk radio, and then FOX News, bloomed after the Fairness Doctrine was ended.
Net neutrality gives the FCC oversight of every ISP in the country. With net neutrality powers, the FCC might be compelled to expand as ISPs ask need clarification when applying net neutrality regulations. This is how these simple regulations that supposedly are designed to keep the Internet open and fair can be grown into a governing authority over Internet content, as once happened in radio.
It can be hard to trust the market--checked by informed consumers--to regulate itself. Some feel better when government gets involved as a "fair" referee. Others argue that experience should teach us that government isn't always so fair. On net neutrality, I'd like to wait and see what the marketplace does before empowering government to enforce arbitrary rules on a fast-evolving marketplace.