CNET has just run the guest column, “Just say no to Ma Bell-era Net neutrality regulation,” Adam Thierer and I wrote in response to “Just say no to fake Net neutrality” by Derek Turner (of Free Press), which decried the win-win-win compromise suggested by Amazon’s Paul Misener, just as Free Press has more recently denounced the compromise proposed by Google and Verizon.
We make a few key points:
- History demonstrates the dangers of regulatory capture, and the costs to consumers of regulation from lost investment and innovation.
- These dangers and costs far outweigh the purported benefits of regulation (in addressing a non-existent harm).
- Broadband markets are competitive enough to prevent the kinds of abuses advocates of net neutrality regulation fret about.
- Government could foster more broadband competition by deregulating spectrum and local wireline franchising.
I’ve been having a lively debate with the commenters on the piece, so feel free to join in! Unfortunately, we don’t seem to be getting much substantive engagement with our argument—just the usual mix of “These guys are just corporate whores!” and “Can’t you see the sky is falling?”
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.