I am no longer the only writer who is anti-net neutrality and happy about the failure of the net neutrality legislation in the Senate, “mandated net neutrality is completely unnecessary. For the telecoms to become site-obstructing bullies would be an odd business model.” Via Hands Off the Net by Brian C. Anderson
More excerpts from Hands Off the Net by Brian C. Anderson:
“‘The providers have no incentive to kick anybody out,’ he says. ‘They want to get as much content as possible on their conduit. That’s what attracts customers.’ This is why bloggers shouldn’t fear that differentiated service will prove an enemy of openness.”
“Competition will give providers a positive incentive to stay honest. Say Verizon wants to charge Amazon oodles to join the fast lane, and Amazon refuses. Verizon could boot Amazon off its network in retaliation. But zillions of Amazon fans would jump ship to another supplier. ‘The market works these things out, as it should,’ advises regulatory theorist Peter Huber. But meanwhile, many Internet giants like Amazon and Google are backing neutrality, because they don’t want to pay any more for bandwidth, which—to match fast lane rivals—they’ll have to in a non-neutral regime.”
“Political censorship is equally improbable. Christian Coalition president Roberta Combs worries that, without enforced neutrality, ‘a cable company with a pro-choice board of directors could decide that it doesn’t like a pro-life organization using its high-speed network to encourage pro-life activities’—and silence it. ‘Sure, it would be legal [to block access],’ retorts Tim Lee, a contributor to the libertarian Technology Liberation Front blog. ‘But it would also be commercial suicide, as millions of irate pro-lifers would switch to their local Baby Bell and call their Congresscritters.’”
[snip]
“A neutrality law would dampen this healthy competition. ‘Without neutrality,’ Vanderbilt law prof Christopher Yoo, a leading thinker on Net regulations, informs me, ‘providers could compete on quality of service, giving, say, voice communications a higher priority to make Internet telephony work better, or they could boost the security features of the network, in each case targeting a smaller subset of the market, like specialty stores in a world dominated by larger, efficient stores offering one-stop shopping.’ A neutrality law, forcing all traffic to be treated the same, would transform broadband into a kind of commodity. ‘That would favor the largest firms, those with the largest economies of scale,’ elaborates Heritage Foundation telecom expert James Gattuso. Challengers—especially tiny ones—would have a hard time getting into the market.”
[snip]
“Net neutrality would swiftly become a bureaucratic nightmare. ‘Neutrality regulation might as well have been labeled the ‘Telecom Lawyer & Lobbyist Full Employment Act of 2006’ because it would generate mountains of regulation and litigation in coming years,’ says Theirer. ‘You simply can’t put something as amorphous as ‘digital nondiscrimination’ mandates on the books and then expect that regulators won’t abuse it—and that means competing teams of lawyers, consultants, and economists will be hired to try to figure it all out. When they don’t, the lawsuits will start flying.’”
“The biggest reason to be thankful Congress resisted net neutrality: the scary prospect of Ted Kennedy and Nancy Pelosi trying to stamp out broadband traffic ‘discrimination.’ Some of the most vocal neutrality advocates, including Save the Internet campaign organizer Free Press, relentlessly agitate for regulation of other media to fight ‘corporate interests’ and guarantee ‘fairness.’ The deeper agenda at work in the net neutrality debate, insufficiently noticed by most commentators, is the Left’s zeal to get a hold of the new media, which have given conservative voices powerful outlets, shattering the liberal monopoly over news and opinion outlets—and regulate those outlets out of existence, so we can all go back to the days when the New York Times and other elite liberal institutions set the agenda.”
