New Push for Internet Regulation
Thursday, March 6th, 2008 By Marc KilmerWriting in Forbes, Phil Kerpin of Americans for Prosperity reminds us that the efforts to regulate the Internet are not dead:
With the introduction of the misleadingly named Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2008 by Massachusetts Rep. Ed Markey, the push for regulating the Internet under a so-called network neutrality regime has begun again in earnest.The angry left–including Free Press and MoveOn.org–is fully engaged, and Democratic presidential hopefuls Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are strong supporters. But network neutrality is more about imposing a top-down regulatory model on the Internet, which could lead to outright government subsidization and control, than it is about protecting freedom. The Markey bill has been described as simply commissioning a study of the issue, but the bill includes a new national broadband policy statement that would almost guarantee onerous new regulation….
The latest volley is the Markey bill, which purports to establish an assessment process at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), including public broadband summits and Internet-based commenting. Such an approach is reasonable, given that the outcome would likely be a vindication of current network management practices. Unfortunately, the Markey bill goes further, undermining the entire point of the assessment process by enshrining into law a new broadband policy statement that includes strict network neutrality language prohibiting network providers from prioritizing network traffic based upon source, ownership or destination.
This language pre-empts the outcome of the assessment process, and effectively prohibits business models that might make sense for offering next- generation Internet services that are affordable and maintain a high quality of service. The Internet has finite capacity, and delivery of high-quality video is enormously expensive. Allowing a multiplicity of payers, where companies offering expanded services like movie downloads negotiate with Internet service providers for expedited transit, may be the best way to generate the revenue that’s necessary for the Internet to continue to grow and innovate.
If prioritizing traffic is made illegal, that could deter the kind of infrastructure investments that the Internet needs to continue functioning well. The language of the broadband policy statement in the Markey bill could prevent infrastructure companies from having effective control over the data traveling across their networks. That means allowing teenagers using massive amounts of peer-to-peer bandwidth for trading stolen videogames crowding out customers who need high-quality bandwidth for video conferencing, telemedicine or other next-generation services.
Tags: Telecom
