The Sunlight Foundation reports that the Federal Communications Commission has received more than 800,000 public comments on the topic of “net neutrality,” more than 60 percent of them form letters written by organized campaigns and more than 200 from law firms on behalf of themselves or their clients. That’s an impressive outpouring of public comments.
But Berin Szoka, a long-ago Cato intern who now runs TechFreedom, argues, “This debate is no longer about net neutrality. A radical fringe has hijacked the conversation in an attempt to undo two decades of bipartisan consensus against heavy-handed government control of the Internet.” TechFreedom has just launched DontBreakThe.Net, a web-based campaign to expose the danger facing the internet from well-meaning demands for something called “net neutrality.” In an open letter to FCC chairman Tom Wheeler, Szoka says:
Subjecting broadband to Title II of the 1996 Telecom Act would trigger endless litigation, cripple investment, slow broadband deployment and upgrades, and thus harm underserved communities. Al Gore may not have exactly ‘invented the Internet,’ but President Clinton’s FCC chairman Bill Kennard deserves much credit for choosing not to embroil the Internet in what he called the ‘morass’ of Title II. Kennard’s approach of ‘vigilant restraint’ unleashed over $1 trillion in private investment, which built the broadband networks everyone takes for granted today. Abandoning that approach would truly break the Internet.
Net Neutrality supporters such as Google, Facebook, and the NAACP haven’t jumped on the Title II bandwagon because they understand that Title II would threaten the entire Internet. Title II proponents claim the FCC can simply ‘reclassify’ broadband, but in truth, there’s no such thing as reclassification, only re-interpretation of the key definitions of the 1996 Telecom Act. If the FCC re-opens that Pandora’s Box, the bright line Chairman Kennard drew between Title II and the Internet will disappear forever. Startups and edge/content providers will inevitably be caught in the fray. And besides, the FCC has a long history of overstepping its bounds.
Invoking Title II would trigger years of litigation. It’s not clear the FCC could ultimately ‘reclassify’ broadband at all, and even less clear the FCC could, or actually would, follow through on talk of paring back Title II’s most burdensome rules, like retail price controls. Even if ‘reclassification’ stood up in court, the FCC still couldn’t do what net neutrality hardliners want: banning prioritization. The FCC would succeed only in creating a dark cloud of legal uncertainty. That would slow broadband upgrades and discourage new entrants, such as Google Fiber, from entering the market at all.
The best policy would be to maintain the ‘Hands off the Net’ approach that has otherwise prevailed for 20 years. Innovation could thrive, and regulators could still keep a watchful eye, intervening only where there is clear evidence of actual harm, not just abstract fears. As former FCC Chairman Bill Kennard put it, ‘I don’t want to dump the whole morass of Title II regulation on the cable pipe.’ If we want to maintain a free and open Internet, and encourage broadband competition, the FCC would do well to heed his advice.
TechFreedom created this catchy graphic for its campaign to encourage more people to understand what’s at stake in the so-called “net neutrality” fight.
