Got busy last week and failed to blog about this Wall Street Journal column by my colleague Bret Swanson and tech visionary George Gilder about the dangers of net neutrality regulation. They argue that:
The petitions under consideration at the FCC and the Markey net neutrality bill would set an entirely new course for U.S. broadband policy, marking every network bit and byte for inspection, regulation and possible litigation. Every price, partnership, advertisement and experimental business plan on the Net would have to look to Washington for permission. Many would be banned. Wall Street will not deploy the needed $100 billion in risk capital if Mr. Markey, digital traffic cop, insists on policing every intersection of the Internet.
And there’s another editorial in today’s WSJ by business author Andy Kessler entitled “Internet Wrecking Ball.” Kessler also points to the innovation-killing nature of NN regulation:
“With net neutrality, there will be no new competition and no incentives for build outs. Bandwidth speeds will stagnate, and new services will wither from bandwidth starvation. … The trick to an open and innovative Internet is not sneaky technical fixes nor more rules and regulations and bureaucracies to enforce them. The Internet will only expand based on competitive principles, not socialist diktat. The more we can do to clear a path, the greater our national wealth will be.”
Make sure to read both pieces.
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.