Congressmen are notoriously confused by technology issues. A few
years ago, Sen. Ted Stevens took up the issue of net neutrality.
Then the chairman of the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee, he
explained to a no-doubt rapt Congressional audience
that the Internet was 1) “not a big truck” but 2) was instead “a
series of tubes.”
There are many things which legislators tend to understand —
taxing, spending, campaigning, trucks — but the intricacies of
modern technology are not always among them. So I cringed when I
heard last year that NARAL, a hard-line pro-abortion group, had a
text message blast rejected by wireless provider Verizon on the
grounds that Verizon reserves the right to refuse to send
controversial messages — of any political persuasion — over its
system.
Surely, I thought, this would lead to calls for regulatory
action, and surely confusion would ensue. Never mind that after a
swift and loud public outcry, Verizon reversed its decision the
very next day. A controversy touching so many obvious hot-buttons
would undoubtedly touch a regulator’s deepest urges.
And sure enough, with the help of some liberal advocacy groups,
the FCC has begun to mull the business of texting and rejecting.
Several of these groups, led by the left-leaning tech advocacy
organization Public Knowledge, recently submitted a petition
demanding that the FCC issue a ruling that blockages are
illegal.
BUT WHAT THEY’RE calling for is hardly safe text. Instead, it’s
governmental bullying. Their rallying cry is that Verizon’s action
amounted to “censorship.”
But was it? Most people would not think it censorship for a
party host to ask an unruly, argumentative guest to settle down,
nor for their local coffee shop to place rules on what bulletins
might or might not be posted on its cork board. These are private
actors that have a right and, indeed, often an obligation
to watch over what is said and done on their property.
The same goes for Verizon. Just because its network exists
largely in the wireless ether doesn’t make it any less property.
Verizon, like any property owner, needs to reserve the right to
manage the content that flows over its network.
Believing this doesn’t mean one must endorse all corporate
decisions to block content. It was public pressure that forced
Verizon to lift its block — and that’s just how it should be. That
this pressure was effective in just 24 hours, while Congress and
the FCC have still yet to rule, suggests that public scrutiny is a
far more effective regulator than the government
Yet Public Knowledge and its neutrality-loving brethren persist
in clamoring for FCC action. They want to treat wireless carriers
as public utilities rather than as private property owners. It’s a
fundamental misunderstanding about the nature of widely used
private networks.
THE REAL ISSUE at play here is that old favorite of Senator
Stevens, network neutrality. Network neutrality has been making the
legislative and bureaucratic rounds for years. It’s been the
subject of a lot of talk but rather little action.
That’s not to say that nothing has been done. Net neutrality has
been “enshrined in principle” at the FCC. Thankfully, federal
regulators tend to take their “principles” about seriously as
politicians do their campaign promises.
But this is Washington, so debate must go on. At a Senate
Commerce Committee hearing on net neutrality last Tuesday, the
testimony advocating neutrality veered from the irritating to the
unexpected to the wholly irrelevant.
FCC Chairman Kevin Martin said that no additional regulations
are required. The FCC simply ought to “enforce the principles it
has already adopted,” which, he made sure to emphasize, they really
do have the authority to do. Never underestimate a bureaucracy’s
willingness to tout its own authority.
The most erroneous and absurd bit of testimony came from TV
actress Justine Bateman — known for playing Mallory Keaton on
Family Ties. Not only did she insist that net neutrality
“is not government regulation,” she also declared that not
mandating net neutrality would be akin to allowing telecom
companies to engage in “private taxation,” a notion so baffling
that it’s actually impressive. I expected her to follow this with
calls for aggressive pacifist warfare, but instead she added the
following:
The Internet has been defined by innovation; the
Internet itself was a product of American innovation. Google was
created in a garage by two college students. EBay was created by a
hobbyist. How successful might those two sites have been without
the freedoms we enjoy on the Internet today?
In fact, not only were all of these companies born in an era with
no mandated net neutrality, it’s utterly unclear that a lack of
neutrality would’ve impeded them in any way whatsoever. Of course,
this was the same hearing in which the Christian Coalition sided
with abortion rights group NARAL, so trying to make sense of it all
is likely a fruitless endeavor.
This issue does bring about strange bedfellows. In addition to
Verizon’s text message policy, the other major complaint during the
hearing was regarding Comcast’s policy of Internet “network
management” — slowing some bandwidth heavy applications during
peak periods in order to make sure a few users don’t tie it up for
everyone.
Now, I am on record as a Comcast grumbler. In general, I consider the company to be
the lowest form of corporate life on Earth. But they are largely in
the right to manage their network as they see fit. The best way to
foster freedom on the net is for Washington’s armies of
bureaucratic busybodies to keep their hands off it.
