FCC and Net Neutrality – Destroying the Dynamic Internet
Before another court challenge, a slew of experts explain why the FCC’s net neutrality rules won’t work.
In August of 2015, a diverse collection of engineers, economists, civil rights organizations, manufacturers, businesses and legal scholars filed briefs with the Washington, D.C. Court of Appeals arguing why the Internet should not be subject to the Federal Communications Commission’s new open Internet rules – regulations copy-pasted from the telephone network of the 1930s. The briefs highlighted several arguments against the FCC’s decision, including the negative impact on the future of health care and education, First Amendment violations and how the new rules harm digitally underserved and unserved communities. All told, a broad cross section of Americans told the court that the unelected agency’s misguided decision will diminish America’s world-class Internet, unless it’s overturned.
The FCC’s rules, adopted in February, ban blocking and paid prioritization of Internet traffic. Yet the Washington-based Phoenix Center observed that the FCC’s rules ban what common carrier laws allow under Title II of the Communication Act, the authority which the FCC asserts. If Internet access is to be regulated as a utility as the FCC proposes, then providers are allowed to offer different types of services (paid prioritization) and providers are allowed to earn a “just and reasonable” return on service, not the so-called zero-price rule that the FCC wants to implement. In short, blocking and paid prioritization are expressly permitted in the statutes, the very practices the FCC claims to have thwarted with its new rules.
The Multicultural Media, Telecom and Internet Council, speaking for more than 45 national civil rights organizations, noted that the rules did not take into account their impact on historically disadvantaged communities. In these communities, mass Internet services are not ubiquitous, and the FCC’s rules will make needed network deployment more expensive and thus endanger the progress toward narrowing this digital divide. As the council noted, the rules will increase the cost of Internet access and deter ad-supported offers that make the Internet more affordable to people of lower income.
Net neutrality laws, and further FCC regulations, on Internet bandwidth is stupid, contrary to free market, and just won’t work. Give it up lib’s.
