So-called ‘net neutrality’ an excuse for federal regulation
May 22, 2008
If you head down to the post office and drop a letter in the slot with a — wait while we check our calendar, here — 42-cent stamp on it, the post office will generally deliver that “first class” letter anywhere in the country in less than a week.
If you’re willing to pay considerably more for “Priority” or “Express” delivery, you can get your missive there considerably faster. Does this “discriminate” against the lowly first-class or bulk-mailed letter? Sure. The carriers treat the different classes of letter differently, as instructed.
Do we need a new government bureaucracy to stop this from happening? Um … no. In fact, the current postal rate structure was developed by a quasi-government body in the first place, though in response to free-market competitors such as FedEx and UPS.
Now, as the Internet matures, it has occurred to some Internet Service Providers that they, too, could finance the provision of faster delivery for some services by offering special “express” connections to Web sites whose hosts are willing to pay extra to have customers “delivered to their door” without the time delays common in today’s lower-capacity networks.
We don’t need to ask how congressional nanny-staters — who believe anything that’s not mandatory should be regulated or banned — have responded. Once the catchy phrase — “net neutrality” — was found, the rest was second nature.
Several bills — described as “good net neutrality bills” by The New York Times — now circulate in Congress. “One in the House … would give the job of preserving net neutrality to the Federal Communications Commission,” the Timesmen enthused in an editorial Monday. “A Senate bill … takes a similar approach. This month, John Conyers, Democrat of Michigan, and Zoe Lofgren, Democrat of California, introduced a bill that would allow the Justice Department to bring antitrust actions against ISPs that violate net neutrality.”
Wow! Not enough criminals? Make up new crimes!
In fact, such “net neutrality” regulation would be both unnecessary and harmful, warns James L. Gattuso of the Heritage Foundation. Read More.
