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Net Neutrality, The Dumb Idea That Won’t Die

Posted on Tuesday, October 3, 2023
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by Outside Contributor
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net neutrality written over digital image

America’s internet service is faster and more dynamic than ever. Thanks to affordable pricing and expanded access, households with broadband service rose 43 percent over the past decade. More than half of American households accessed 5G broadband in 2022, up 41 percent from the year before.

Despite that record, however, the Federal Communications Commission chairwoman, Jessica Rosenworcel, just announced she will bring back the flawed and (until recently) forgotten policy called “net neutrality.” The goal will again be to have the FCC treat the internet as a public utility. This approach will stifle innovation, hinder broadband deployment, and not address genuine efforts to close the digital divide.

When the FCC passed the Restoring Internet Freedom Order in December 2017, effectively ending the net neutrality rules, supporters of the regulations predicted it would kill the internet. CNN ran a headline saying that repealing net neutrality would be the “End of the Internet As We Know It.” Many claimed the internet would load one word at a time. Sen. Bernie Sanders predicted the internet as we know it “would cease to exist.”

Instead, average internet speeds in the United States have increased by more than 100 Mbps since the end of “net neutrality.”

But suddenly, we must “save the internet”? Even after the internet withstood the test of COVID, where everyone went digital during the dark days of the pandemic, handling traffic and streaming far better than Europe, which has net neutrality and had to routinely degrade services like YouTube and Netflix to handle the increased traffic.

Beyond the army of digital activists calling for net neutrality, Silicon Valley giants like Google, Netflix and Apple led the charge on net neutrality. University of Nebraska Law Scholar Gus Hurwitz wrote in The Washington Post in 2017, “The net neutrality rules are pure rent seeking by a content/edge industry as a way to hinder potential industrial competitors.”

Opponents of the net neutrality regime have highlighted the economic case against strict net neutrality rules, focusing on decreased investment. Others have also observed that inherent to network management is the need to prioritize data, especially in the case of more sophisticated networks.

The telecom blogger Morris Lane opined future 5G networks are not compatible with the definitions of net neutrality because, through prioritization, they “can be turned into a multi-lane highway, minus the hassle of building lots of separate physical lanes. Ideally, one of these lanes could be conjured up when needed, providing superior bandwidth, lower latency or other guarantees denied those cruising along the same road.”

As the FCC begins a new back and forth over this policy debate, it is doing so in a politically volatile environment that could more easily ensnare other layers of the internet stack into the tech political ping-pong match that began over net neutrality. This political dynamic was presciently predicted in a 2009 paper by internet scholars Berin Szoka and Adam Thierer, who argued, “Unless we find a way to achieve ‘Digital Détente,’ the consequences of this increasing regulatory brinkmanship will be ‘mutually assured destruction’ for industry and consumers.”

The vital lesson of net neutrality is evident beyond the question of broadband regulation. As these debates go on for years, without long-lasting pragmatic solutions and bipartisan agreement, regulatory uncertainty can trap consumers and companies in regulatory purgatory.

This doesn’t have to happen. Let’s let net neutrality die the death it richly deserves so our thriving internet can continue to live.

Reprinted with permission from DC Journal by Nathan Leamer.

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Max
Max
1 year ago

Bottom Line: The government will continue to control all aspects of its citizens and freedoms as it continues to march toward the completion of their agenda of Socialism/Communism for the nation.

David Millikan
David Millikan
1 year ago

Another made up term by democrats. Just like the made up terms carbon neutrality and carbon free when there is no such thing.
It’s more FANTASY WORLD and lies by democrats at the expense of Americans Freedom and Our Money taken away by their FASCIST policies as they continue to bow down to Communist China.
Meanwhile, Communist China increases their internet use with TikTok and continues to build more Coal burning Power Plants (10/Week) leading with India in producing drastically more pollution than the United States. Meanwhile, the United States has ZERO Energy Production through 2024, thanks to Dictator Beijing biden and his Communist Party and now they want to destroy the internet too since they can’t CONTROL it to be entirely one sided, theirs.
Why do you think they are pushing A.I. so hard with that biased ChatGPT programed by democrats to brainwash kids and the public to worship only democrats without question.
Cause they know they can’t win the 2024 Presidential election without cheating just as they did in the 2020 Presidential election.
So now all of sudden just 13 months from the Presidential election they have to mess with the internet. It’s the only way they can rig the elections.
Why else would they all of sudden want to mess with the internet? Because President Trump is WINNING and they are SCARED.

Rik
Rik
1 year ago

It’s not about stifling innovation, it’s really about establishing control! Control of what? . . . Control of Free Speech especially any type of criticism of their abuse of power! Remember, under Communism the people serve the government, the government doesn’t serve the people! Obama wanted to fundamentally change America but he NEVER said how or to what? Now you know that it’s COMMUNISM!

Dwight K. Walker
Dwight K. Walker
1 year ago

Hey, it’s the socialist government, stupid is, stupid does!

Jackie
Jackie
1 year ago

I feel like this is a ridiculous control effort by Democrats!!

Kyle Buy you some guns,and learn how to shoot
Kyle Buy you some guns,and learn how to shoot
1 year ago

WE got a good thing going. Why F with it. ???? Stupid jerks live in LA LA land. Kyle L.

Robert Zuccaro
Robert Zuccaro
1 year ago

Democrats know free speech must be controlled. How’s that 1984 saying go… about controlling the past and future? Coincidentally we are at war with Ukrainasia.

Eugene Burch Downman
Eugene Burch Downman
1 year ago

Only the clueless Biden Administration would be so stupid as to support net neutrality!

Oliver Holmes
Oliver Holmes
1 year ago

Killem all, tell God they died!

Daniel Penny
biden and harris speaking in black and white
A row of supercomputers running simulations of quantum cryptography algorithms to test their efficiency and effectiveness
President Joe Biden, son Hunter Biden and sister Valerie Biden walk across the South Lawn of The White House on July 28, 2024 in Washington, DC. President Biden is returning from a weekend trip to Camp David. (Photo by Michael A. McCoy/Getty Images)

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