Net neutrality” is a term you?ve been hearing lately. Several bills addressing the issue are circulating Capitol Hill, including one called the Internet Freedom and Nondiscrimination Act, which won approval from the House Judiciary Committee last week.
At first glance, the term seems like something no one could be against. After all, who doesn?t want to see the Internet continue to grow as an impartial tool for moving information?
But net neutrality backers are counting on a popular misunderstanding of the concept to be an effective Trojan horse that would actually bring more government regulation to the Internet.
It may be an effective strategy. For a nation that uses the Internet so much, most Americans would probably score pretty low on a digital literacy test.
Don?t these people clamoring for regulation of MySpace.com realize that the basic service it provides ? allowing users to post searchable, personal profiles with any degree of anonymity they choose ? has been around since Al Gore invented the Internet in the first place?
“Net” actually stands for network, not the Internet. And net neutrality ? according to its proponents ? is the principle that Internet service providers like AT&T or Verizon should not be allowed to charge more for priority treatment of speed-sensitive data and applications.
Companies that provide such content ? like Google, Yahoo and Amazon.com ? want these prices capped to lower their costs and increase their profit.
And I would like a first-class airline ticket to Honolulu for the price of a coach seat. I wonder if I could get a co-sponsor for that bill?
In addition to making things easier for Web giants, price controls on ISPs imposed by net neutrality legislation would cause Internet traffic jams. Basic economics tells us that if you cap the price of something, less of that something ? in this case, bandwidth ? is produced.
Federal regulation has already limited the availability of broadband, according to one analyst. The 1996 Telecom Act mandated that local companies that strung broadband wire had to share it with competing businesses. This “drove investors away” from broadband, and now the U.S. is 16th in the world in broadband deployment, says Sonia Arrison, technology studies director for the free-market Pacific Research Institute.
But another tech-savvy woman disagrees. Hillary Clinton favors the Internet Freedom Preservation Act, which would set price caps on Internet traffic by federal mandate. Didn?t she learn a lesson from trying to impose universal health care?
“We must embrace an open and nondiscriminatory framework for the Internet of the 21st century,” said the junior senator from New York. “Any effort to fundamentally alter the inherently democratic structure of the Internet must be rejected.”
Google agrees. “Democracy on the Web works” is one of their guiding principles. Isn?t it curious then that ? as Arrison reports ? Google?s news search has recently dropped a few previously approved sites for being critical of Islam?
“We do not permit some types of content, such as hate speech and pornography, in Google News,” a company spokesperson wrote in response to my query about their policy. “Of course, making determinations about those is sometimes difficult ? there are no universally accepted definitions or ways to apply them.”
Of course, the principle of free speech means Google has the right to provide links to whomever it wants. Just as the principle of the free market means that ISPs can charge what they want.
In a democracy, a few people get together and vote, then tell everyone else how it?s going to be. In the free market, you do what you want as long as you pay your own freight and don?t bother your neighbor.
Let?s hope the Internet never becomes a democracy.
Aaron Keith Harris writes about politics, the media, pop culture and music and is a regular contributor to National Review Online and Bluegrass Unlimited. He can be reached at [email protected].
