Thanks, FCC. But Was It Necessary?
By Matt Pillar, chief editor
Whether last week’s 3-2 FCC ruling on Net Neutrality was a solution to a manufactured problem is debatable. So debatable, in fact, that I anticipate a debate on the premise that it’s debatable. But if there was any risk that the nation’s major ISPs could stifle small-to-midsized businesses by creating broadband “fast lanes” for deep-pocketed businesses and discriminating against peer-to-peer and file transfer protocols to serve their own agendas—and there’s evidence that some were already doing so—the ruling might be considered a win for retailers.
By way of background, under existing FCC regulations, ISPs are considered providers of “information services,” and they’re essentially exempt from government regulations. Left to their own discretion, some major national ISPs were toeing and sometimes crossing a data discrimination line by picking-and-choosing what consumers were seeing online, and charging content providers accordingly. Through a tiered pricing program, ISPs could open fast lanes of bandwidth to the highest bidders, thus limiting bandwidth share for smaller businesses.
The headlines from last week’s ruling indicate that won’t happen now, which sounds like good news to small businesses. After all, a free and open, equal-access-to-all Internet is what allowed a kid at Harvard to push MySpace aside and build the world’s most popular social network, right? Didn’t it facilitate the 10-year maturation of a 1999 startup shoe retailer from zilch to a billion dollars? Even goliath Internet companies like Amazon and Google are champions of the ruling.
But the devil is in the details, which brings us back to the debate. Federal Communications Commissioner Ajit Pai characterized the ruling as “a measure that imposes intrusive government regulations that won’t work to solve a problem that doesn’t exist, using legal authority the FCC doesn’t have.”
That’s a pretty complex assessment. I’m generally not a fan of “intrusive government regulations,” but in this case it’s prudent to be wary of the political manipulation of semantics that’s going on.
Ask just about any democrat clear up to President Obama—who had a very influential voice in the debate—and you’ll get an argument that the FCC’s hand in the Internet business is about ensuring the kind of fairness and oversight that protects the creative, massive, and still-blossoming potential to conduct business on the Internet.
On the other hand, just about any republican worthy of the GOP will stand pat behind the words of Pai. Oversight becomes overbearing, and overbearing stifles that creative, massive, and still-blossoming potential of the Internet.
As per the norm, the right and the left are diametrically opposed on which path will lead to a desired outcome they both agree on. Where do you stand? Do you think it was time for federal oversight, or was it unnecessary? Do you anticipate the ruling will have an impact on your business? Chime in on comments, or drop me a line at matt.pillar@jamesonpublishing.com