I want to focus on the part of the video, beginning about 30:00, which discusses “net neutrality.” The interview with Professor Hazlett took place in 2017, at a time when there was lots of fighting over this issue.
The pro-regulation crowd claimed that net neutrality was needed to protect consumers from slow and expensive service. And they made all sorts of ridiculous claims about the Trump Administration’s plans to get rid of the Obama-era regulation.
At the time, this tweet from the Democratic members of the U.S. Senate got a lot of attention.
So what actually happened after net neutrality was repealed?
I suppose the first question to answer is:
Did..
…the…
…Internet…
…slow…
…to…
…a…
…crawl?
Not exactly. Robby Soave gives us the details in a column for Reason. He starts with some background information.
Exactly four years ago, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) repealed the internet regulation known as net neutrality, which had forced internet service providers (ISPs) to treat all content identically in terms of download and streaming speeds, for instance. Since the popular policy had come into existence during the Obama administration, and was gutted during President Donald Trump’s term, its demise was treated as the end of the internet as we know it by panic-stricken #resistance liberals. …The term net neutrality was coined by law professor Tim Wu in 2006; his big idea was that the government needed the power to restrict ISPs’ ability to offer different levels of service to different customers. …Wu cautioned that without rules requiring internet service providers to treat all traffic and content equally, the internet as we had come to know it would cease to exist.”
And here are the results.
Today, the internet is still here, and still functioning properly. Expectations that ISPs would practice widespread and improper discrimination did not pan out. On the contrary, the internet is better and faster for basically everybody than it was when net neutrality ended—in fact, it’s better and faster than at any point in the past. …Foes of net neutrality were clearly correct that the internet didn’t need the government to save it, and absent federal direction and regulation, everything is fine.
The moral of the story is that we experienced a major test of regulation vs. deregulation. And we’ve learned that the advocates of red tape were wildly wrong and the supporters of free enterprise were exactly right.
The Internet has made all of our lives better, in part because there’s been an accidental policy of benign neglect from Washington.
But that’s about to change.
Even though our economy already is burdened by record amounts of regulation and red tape, the FCC is pushing forward with a plan to turn the Internet into a moss-covered public utility.
This almost leaves me at a loss for words. It’s truly remarkable – in a bad way – that the bureaucrats at the Federal Communications Commission think that the Internet can be improved by a big dose of 1930s-era regulation and control.
My Cato colleague, Jim Harper, summarized the issue last month.
Do you want your Internet service provider to operate like the water company or the electric company?… the FCC has sought for years now to regulate broadband Internet service providers…like it used to regulate AT&T, with government mandated terms of service if not tariffs and price controls. This doesn’t fit the technical environment of the Internet, which allows for diverse business models. Companies that experiment with network management, pricing, internal subsidy, and so on can find the configurations that serve widely varying consumers and their differing Internet needs the best.
But the FCC apparently doesn’t like innovation, diversity, and experimentation and instead wants to impose centralized rules. And to justify its power grab, FCC regulators are reclassifying the Internet as “telecommunications carriers” rather than an “information service.”
Title II, which applies to “telecommunications carriers,” allows common carrier regulation of the type the FCC is trying to impose….This is so it can have more control over the business decisions made by Internet service providers. …”Net neutrality” is a good engineering principle, but it shouldn’t be a legal mandate. Technology and markets surpassed any need for command-and-control regulation in this area long ago. But regulators don’t give up power without a fight.
But maybe mockery is the best way to win this issue.
Here’s a new video from the folks at Protect Internet Freedom (the some people who put together the second video in this post).
If you’ve ever been at hold at the Department of Motor Vehicles or some other bureaucracy, this may cause uncomfortable and painful flashbacks.
And here’s another video, put together by Senator Cruz’s office.
And speaking of humor, here are some new cartoons on the topic.
Though this next cartoon is my favorite because it so effectively captures my feelings.
The Internet has been a huge success, so why on earth would anybody think it will be better if a bunch of regulators can second-guess the free market?!?
If you want more cartoons on Internet regulation, here’s a collection that I shared last year.
P.S. Shifting to another topic, here’s a story that belongs in the category of “great moments in lobbying.”
Here are some excerpts from a story published by the Raleigh News and Observer.
Sex between lobbyists and government officials who are covered under North Carolina’s ethics laws does not constitute a gift that must be listed in disclosure reports, the State Ethics Commission said Friday. …The opinion was in a response to an inquiry from the Secretary of State’s lobbying compliance director, Joal H. Broun, in a letter on Dec. 15. …Broun’s request also wanted to know if that activity falls within the definition of “goodwill lobbying,” which is an indirect attempt to influence legislation or executive action, such as the building of relationships, according to state law, and is also considered lobbying.
I’m sure there are some serious points to be made, but I confess that my immediate reaction was to think about this cartoon.
Whether any “goodwill” is being created is a topic for another day.
That being said, you’ll be happy to know that actually procuring hookers is against the rules.
However, providing a prostitute to a legislator or other covered official would constitute a gift or item of value and would have to be reported on disclosure forms – which, of course, would also be evidence of a crime, the opinion says.
The good news is that this rule, if properly enforced, will protect a vulnerable group people from being morally corrupted.
But enough about the need to protect prostitutes from being contaminated by close proximity to politicians.
I want to close on a serious point. As I wrote the other day, the best way to reduce lobbying is to reduce the size and scope of government.
I suspect that most Americans, if asked to list the biggest economic success story in the United States over the past few decades, would list high tech and the Internet.
And that would be a good answer. For those of us with a good bit of gray hair, it’s sometimes remarkable to think how much different the world is today with laptops, tablets, smart phones, and all sorts of other gadgets.
Gadgets with huge value, by the way. Ask yourself the question in this video. How much money would you need to give up the Internet for the rest of your life?
But if every dark cloud has a silver lining, then I guess silver clouds must have dark linings. And you won’t be surprised to learn that the dark lining for the Internet and high tech is big government.
More specifically, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) wants to use a law from the 1930s as an excuse to seize authority to micro-manage this (at least so far) vibrant sector of our economy.
In a column for the Wall Street Journal, Gordon Crovitz writes about this regulatory power grab in Washington that could stifle the “permissionless innovation” of the Internet.
Last week Washington abandoned open innovation when the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission yielded to President Obama ’s demands and moved to regulate the freewheeling Internet under the same laws that applied to the Ma Bell monopoly.
So what does that mean?
Until now, anyone could launch new websites, apps and mobile devices without having to lobby a regulator for permission. That was thanks to a Clinton-era bipartisan consensus that the Internet shouldn’t be treated as a public utility. Congress and the White House under both parties kept the FCC from applying the hoary regulations that micromanaged the phone system, which would have frozen innovation online. Last week’s announcement from FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler rejects 20 years of open innovation by submitting the Internet to Title II of the Communications Act of 1934. Once Mr. Wheeler and the commission’s Democratic majority vote this month to apply Title II, the regulations will give them staggering control. Any Internet “charges” and “practices” that the bureaucrats find “unjust or unreasonable is declared to be unlawful.”
And it will open the door to cronyism as already-established companies and well-connected insiders work the system for their own advantage.
This is an open invitation to entrenched companies challenged by new technologies. The Internet has been a source of creative destruction, upending industries from music, movies and newspapers to retail, travel and banking. History teaches that companies threatened by competition will hire as many lawyers as necessary to get regulators to protect them.
And when I wrote the door will be open, it will be wide open.
In 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court warned that if the FCC treated the Internet as a telecommunications service, it “would subject to mandatory common carrier regulation all information service providers that use telecommunications as an input to provide information service to the public”—in other words, almost all websites and apps would be subject to regulation. …once regulators get power, they use it. And if there is any forbearance, there will be litigation from companies seeking to burden their competitors with regulation.
Here are some videos that help put the debate in context.
Let’s start with this Reason TV interview.
Next we have a humorous portrayal of Internet usage in a bureaucrat-governed world.
P.P.S. And since we’re sharing bad news about the Internet, don’t forget that some politicians want a government-empowering, privacy-destroying scheme to let state politicians impose taxes on online sales that take place outside their borders.
Since the popular policy had come into existence during the Obama administration, and was gutted during President Donald Trump’s term, its demise was treated as the end of the internet as we know it by panic-stricken #resistance liberals. …The term net neutrality was coined by law professor Tim Wu in 2006; his big idea was that the government needed the power to restrict ISPs’ ability to offer different levels of service to different customers. …Wu cautioned that without rules requiring internet service providers to treat all traffic and content equally, the internet as we had come to know it would cease to exist.”
International Liberty 