With Friends Like Google…
A tip for the politicians of the future who want to address the markets for information and influence: don’t forget to buy your Google Ad Words or you’ll never get elected.
The Internet’s Lost Decade
Net neutrality sucked the oxygen out of Internet policy for a decade, turning every discussion of Internet policy into a debate over the best way to ensure the Internet remained true to this newly discovered foundational principle of the Internet. But these promises were hollow because net neutrality only applied to one part of the Internet, data transmission between consumers, Internet-based businesses, and Internet Service Providers.
Milestone for Deregulated Internet Service
Net neutrality is an odd issues because it correctly identifies some problems that do take place on the Internet – blocking, throttling, and leveraging platform dominance – while attributing them to the wrong parties. I
Botched Research on Broadband Investment
To the extent that advocates have praised the Hooton study, they have done so by taking its claims at face value without examining the methodology or by simply expressing glee that Hooton got the “right answer” that comports with their project.
DC Circuit Passes the Baton to Congress
I don’t think Congress is ready to regulate any of these things, but it needs to admit we have a problem and commit do the background work on solving it.
Is it Time to Reboot Internet Policy?
None of the proposals for ISP regulation or platform regulation currently in the mix are very good. If the Internet is good for anything, it’s a great disruptor. Is is too much to ask it to disrupt its own policy frameworks toward the goal of producing more of the good and less of the bad?
Save the Internet Act Doesn’t
It’s reasonably clear that Internet regulation is now blowing up in our faces: Congressional Democrats are intent on raising the 2015 OIO from the dead, but for reasons that appear to be totally political. Meanwhile, data brokers make hay with our browsing histories and nobody but the Europeans seems to care.
House Set to Aggravate Internet Problems
The only reason for Congress to turn the clock back to 2015 is to enjoy the comfort of a well-worn path. This is cowardly and counter-productive; the rank and file should say “no” and demand a more serious approach to Internet regulation from their party leadership.
Another Tale of Two Hearings
Privacy is a balancing and line-drawing exercise. Net neutrality is as well, but some of the more combative Democrats don’t see it that way. Perhaps their blindness is willful and perhaps it’s politically-driven. But either way, it’s not doing consumers or the Internet any favors.
Questions for Witnesses in Tomorrow’s Net Neutrality Hearing
Net neutrality was created at a time when the only large firms conducting Internet business were ISPs. It was sensible for lawmakers to focus on ISPs in 2003. But today’s Internet is dominated by non-ISP edge services that routinely abuse personal information. Internet law need to leap forward to the present day.