Net neutrality

The Federal Communications Commission has just issued some regulations intended to further the cause of net neutrality, the idea that the people who control the flow of traffic on the Internet must do so in a nondiscriminatory manner. And they did so by a partisan vote: three Democrats favoring net neutrality, two Republicans opposing it. This is one case where I think the Democrats are in the right.

The problem is that there are two conflicting ideas here. The Republicans are upholding the idea that Government should keep its hands off the free market, a concept that I find generally agreeable. But in the absence of net neutrality regulations, we find ourselves in a situation analogous to what we would have if, say, Ford Motor Company owned the Interstate Highway system, and refused to allow General Motors cars on it (or allowed it, but only at a much higher toll rate than Ford owners paid). I don't think we would put up with that.

Unless we have some system to prevent vertical integration, so that providers of content and providers of the connections would be divorced from each other, net neutrality regulations are the only way to ensure fairness. And net neutrality is a less intrusive way to do it than forcing that prevention of vertical integration. So I favor it.

Some people say the FCC is trying to solve a problem that does not exist; this may be so, but it's a problem that could exist in the future; Internet carriers have threatened to do such things, and it is better to head this off at the pass, before it becomes a problem.