Net neutrality

The internet is a monopoly and needs to be regulated as such.  While individual users might see several available ISPs, the backbone is shared by all.  Therefore, government regulators have a legitimate interest in how it functions. 

Net Neutrality is the requirement that all internet traffic get the same priority.  Free speech advocates say that without net neutrality, large telecoms could slow or block traffic from left wing blogs, for example.  On the other side, telecoms argue that they need the ability to give important and low bandwidth internet functions like email and blog surfing priority over bandwidth hogs like peer to peer file sharing and high resolution video. 

This should be a solvable problem.  Free speech advocates and telecom engineers should be able to design a multi tiered  system that gives large files lower priority without regard to content.  Unfortunately, politicians on both sides are blocking a purely technical solution.  Democrats do not trust telecoms to remain content neutral.  Indeed, without vigilant regulation, that is a serious worry.

Conservatives argue against government involvement of any kind.  This ignores the fact that the internet began as and remains a government program.  It demonstrates that government sometimes can, in the words of President Reagan, “be here to help”.  By opposing all regulation, they force free speech advocates to fight any packet priority system at all. 

Republican rigidity on net neutrality harmful to a technological solution to the bandwidth issue.  It also gives the impression that Republicans are more concerned about large telecoms than freedom of speech.  How different things would look if Republicans championed an innovative technological solution with content guarantees.  No longer would the word “intertubes” be a universal code word for old Republican technological ignorance (Senator Stevens described the internet as being like a network of tubes.). 

The Wikipedia article on net neutrality is surprisingly balanced, with links to all sides of the issue.

   The debate over Net Neutrality is taking place below the radar because of the shear volume of words being dedicated to health care, but it is an important one that needs some more attention.  The Republican stance can be summed up in five words "no government regulation of the Internet".  I understand that this fits one of the core conservative principles, small government, and I don't disagree with it in general.  The problem is I think this issue is far too complex to be boiled down to a five word answer.  As I've considered it more, and I'll freely admit that I'm not an expert, there appear to be a few other issues involved that speak to the future of conservatism.

- The Republican argument is that the government should not be able to tell ISPs how they can do business.  The free market should be allowed to work and these businesses should be left alone to make the decisions they feel are necessary.  Again, I have no argument with the basic principle, but is the ISP market truly a free market?  How many Americans actually have alternatives when it comes to choosing an ISP?  Even for those Americans who have a choice, are the alternatives really apples to apples?  I'm one of the lucky few who can choose between a cable provider and FIOS.  This empowers me to switch providers if I feel one of them is making business decisions that I don't like.  Most people don't have this luxury.

- In our quest to keep the ISP market "free" are we potentially restricting the market for content on the Internet?  One need only look at the cable/satellite television market to see what happens when the people who control the delivery mechanism begin developing their own content.  Time Warner, COMCAST, and the rest have clearly taken actions intended to promote their own content and stifle competition.  Since they are doing this in a market that is similar to that of the ISPs (i.e. not as free as an economist would like it to be due to the restrictive options available to many consumers) they are able to warp the content market in ways that limit the choice of consumers.  Thus the issue of Net Neutrality appears to force conservatives to make a choice...we can have either a free market for the ISPs or we can have a free market for the content providers.  It's hard for me to think of a way we can have both, and the current approach appears to put conservatives in the difficult position of choosing one market over another.

- One of the prime conservative complaints about the recent bailout of the car companies was that business is not risk free.  Companies make decisions.  If they work out they make money, if they don't then they fail.  Are we in danger of having this get thrown in our face on the issue of Net Neutrality?  The ISPs and wireless carriers had a business plan.  Spend money to provide the highest speed internet service we can so people can actually do things like download music, watch tv, play games, etc.  When people see what can be done they will want to pay for this service.  The problem now is that the plan worked too well.  More people want to take advantage of the power of the internet than the system can accommodate.  Are we allowing them to pull a "bait and switch"?  Certainly we're not bailing them out with government dollars, but could we not look at the McCain bill as an effort to protect them from the consequences of their business decisions?

  Again, in an effort to stave off some vitriol, let me say that I agree with the basic approach the Republicans are taking.  I agree that government regulation should be limited to that which is absolutely necessary.  The issue I have is with taking a complicated problem and reducing it to one that is simple.  There is danger in that approach because it ignores the consequences of the decisions made.  I'm interested in the thoughts of fellow conservatives on the issue of Net Neutrality that go beyond the five word answer.  I hope I've come to the right place.

(cross-posted at Red State)

The Politico today has a column penned by David All, a young GOP internet consultant, and Saul Anuzis, Chairman of the Michigan GOP. The column looks at the premise that the GOP is behind its Democratic counterparts online, and suggests one possible reason why - we don't support the idea of big government intervention in regulating the Internet.

As Republicans, we must not only adopt the new techniques and structure of Internet democracy, but also understand the importance of preserving the open nature of the Net as a policy issue.The tools that are available at low cost to Republicans are only there because of an Internet ecosystem that has managed to remain open, despite the efforts of phone and cable companies.

Republicans need to adopt a lighter approach that will preserve the values of decentralization and freedom — essential conservative values — on the Internet. If we fail to engage in this effort, the Internet service providers, who control the last mile of the tubes into a customer’s house or small business, will choke off the affordable tools available to conservative activists.They have already started exercising their market power to block applications that enable Internet users to distribute information across the Net.

They will make the Internet look a lot more like cable TV, where citizens lack access to every legal channel available and where, consequently, conservative activists get shut out. Taking away these free tools will come at the major expense of the activists and small-businesspeople who are the core of our party’s strength.

Given the attacks on cable and telephone companies in this diatribe, it would be easy enough to discount any response from me as shilling on behalf of cable. Look at my bio, however, and you'll see that I may be the one person uniquely qualified to address every inaccuracy and outrageous claim in his post. Prior to coming to work in the cable industry, I was the eCampaign Director for Bush-Cheney '04, and the Republican National Committee. I've been involved in Republican politics - and online politics - since I launched one of the first state party websites (EVER) at the New Mexico GOP in 1995. At that time, there were only about 5 state parties online.

Since I have been active in GOP politics, and specifically online politics, since Andreesson released the browser in 1994, I have a bit to say about the reasons the GOP is behind (which virtually nobody argues). As an employee of the cable industry, I have a bit to say about what , if anything, that has to do with net neutrality.

Lately, it seems certain narratives about the youth vote and digital media have been coming up time and time again, without much analysis of how useful these things actually are, so I thought I would hit on a few issues with the youth vote and new media as a college conservative.
 

Facebook doesn’t work. This kills me. Facebook constantly comes up in discussions about the digital age and it’s still pretty useless. While the importance of social networking cannot be overlooked in terms of keeping in contact with those you might not otherwise and cementing ties from introductions and the like, Facebook still isn’t a platform for political discussion or information retrieval (unless it’s photos from last weekend). The candidates’ pages are largely like comment-enabled static web pages—sort of useless, unless you’re looking for a fight. A candidate who actually made a Facebook page, replete with favorite movies, their former college networks, and a candid photo album or two might be an interesting experiment, though.

Where Facebook does hold a lot of potential is in its corporate and outside applications. Facebook's privacy policy is a nightmare; information never leaves its servers, even if you deactivate, it remains there. In terms of micro-targeting and data collection on voters, Facebook may be extremely useful if it can be utilized properly, but I don't get the sense that it's being used to its fullest on either the data side or the interactive approach to actually contact and motivate people.

One of my favorite non-political blogs is The Future of News. Steve Boriss wrote a fantastic piece titled The Fight for Free Speech: Will We Be the Greatest Generation? about the idea of net neutrality. Referring to a NYT editorial, he says:

The Times ignores the fact that the First Amendment is designed to protect us against suppression of ideas by the government, not the private sector, which has neither the power nor the motive to suppress ideas.

This mistake that Boriss points out is, I think, the liberaltarian fallacy. It assumes that government action is going to protect you from business, rather than get coopted by business. Libertarians intituitively understand that this is absurd, but conservatives and, recently, Republicans, have been unable to make that argument. I suspect that we will not be able to achieve a majority until we have both an intellectually and politically serious critique of both government and big business. Read on.