‘Net Neutrality’ is the Real Threat to the Internet

On the off chance that you haven’t been following regulatory proceedings of the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) in your spare time, there’s a growing controversy about something called ‘net neutrality.’ Which is exactly what, you ask?

Under a strict regime of net neutrality, Internet service providers (ISPs) like Comcast and Qwest would be barred from prioritizing traffic on their networks. In other words, an ISP would need to treat all Internet traffic the same, regardless of how mission-critical or bandwidth-hungry it might be.

For instance, no distinction would be allowed even when traffic originates from a rural hospital’s emergency department or your home security system. Also, ISPs would not be allowed to prioritize Internet traffic that craves speed and stability — think movie-streaming, gaming, video conferencing, and cloud computing — even when this prioritization would not noticeably impact other traffic like e-mail or Twitter.

The debate gained momentum in June when the FCC began exploring a new and controversial second effort to apply net neutrality. (Its first effort was overturned by a federal court in April.)

Just last month, the debate came to Minneapolis South High School where two FCC commissioners made their case for net neutrality at a town hall meeting. Sen. Al Franken and Secretary of State Mark Ritchie also showed up to rally support.

Those who attended the town hall heard that the Internet revolution is in grave danger.

Sen. Franken warned of a “very, very dangerous” future where “a handful of companies will have their hands on all the information that all of us get.” Similarly, Commissioner Michael Copps lectured that “the present danger is that big business will put us on the road to the cannibalization and the cable-ization and the consolidation of broadband and the Internet.” No less than the First Amendment and the Internet’s “democratic potential” are at stake, it was said.

Scared yet?

Me neither.

Their rhetoric certainly paints a scary future that we want to avoid. But where’s the evidence that we’re heading in that direction? Where’s the evidence that we need new regulation?

Regulations usually spring up because of patterns of abuse, but in this case there is no pattern. There’s no polluted river, no abused nursing home resident, and no defrauded investor. Indeed, Free Press — a net neutrality advocacy group and a sponsor of the town hall — admits in a recent report that “there have only been a few high-profile violations of net neutrality.” Without a history of abuse, arguments favoring government-mandated net neutrality rely entirely on presumption and speculation.

Now admittedly, one reason no abuse pattern exists is that the Internet already functions on a largely neutral basis. To net neutrality advocates, this proves their point. In their view, we need to maintain the neutral Internet in its current form if we are to maintain its openness and innovation.

But think about that. Net neutrality advocates are saying we need to set the status quo in regulatory stone in order to maximize the openness and productivity of the Internet in the future.

This commitment to the status quo is the fundamental problem with net neutrality. As professors David Farber (Carnegie Mellon University) and Michael Katz (University of California-Berkeley) explained in the Washington Post a few years back, these net neutrality “initiatives aimed at preserving the best of the old Internet threaten to stifle the emergence of the new one.”

Yes, the current Internet is pretty great. But when I was a freshman in college, I thought the text-based Internet of 1992 was pretty great too.

What if future Internet services thrive on prioritization? Any Internet content that requires speed and stability would benefit from prioritization. In April, Dr. Andre Ng performed the first remote heart operation in Leicester, England. With a reliable Internet connection, Dr. Ng explained that the operation could be performed from anywhere in the world. A day may come when a prioritized Internet feed safely steers your car through traffic. Who knows?

While we can’t foresee what the future holds, net neutrality would make one thing certain: Innovations that rely on prioritization would be prohibited.

Without any pattern of abuse, why shut the door to this entire field of possibilities?

I know. We’re told that corporate dominance over radio and television reveals an inescapable pattern. But the Internet is profoundly different. It’s not structured to require or favor deep pockets like radio and television. Internet content can be very cheap to create and, compared to the scarcity of radio and television bandwidth, Internet bandwidth is quite plentiful.

Yes, we should keep a watchful eye for anticompetitive behavior. Corporations are not angels. But corporations are not demons either. They do what’s good for business. To date, with only light regulation, the Internet has been good for business by being marvelous for consumers. Heavy net neutrality regulations pose the only certain danger to that continuing.

Peter J. Nelson is a policy fellow at the Minneapolis-based Center of the American Experiment, a nonpartisan, tax-exempt, public policy and educational institution that brings conservative and free-market ideas to bear on the hardest problems facing Minnesota and the nation.

This commentary originally appeared in the Pioneer Press on September 5, 2010.