Op-Ed

[Commentary] Handing the network neutrality problem over to a government agency with strong industry ties and poor mechanisms for public accountability poses a real danger of creating more problems than we’d solve. One alternative is to foster a genuinely competitive market for Internet access. If subscribers and customers had adequate information about their options and could vote with their feet, internet service providers (ISPs) would have strong incentives to treat all network traffic fairly. But the ISP market today is under oligopoly control. Nearly one in three American households have no choice when it comes to their Internet, and for all the other consumers choices are quite limited.

Another scenario would be for Congress to step in and pass net neutrality legislation that outlines what the ISPs are not allowed to do. But fighting giant ISP mega-corporations (and their army of lobbyists) in Congress promises to be a tough battle. Yet another option: empower subscribers to not just test their ISP, but challenge it in court if they detect harmful non-neutral practices. That gives all of us the chance to be watchdogs of the public interest, but it too, is likely to face powerful ISP opposition.

[John Ottman is Chairman and co-founder of Minds, Inc. a social media network.]

[Commentary] First Amendment rights were developed and defined in order to protect the political life of the nation. But life within universities is not a mirror of that life. The cardinal First Amendment rule of viewpoint neutrality has absolutely no relevance to the selection of university speakers. Any court that denies this is living in fantasy, blinded by a mechanical doctrine that has no relevance to the phenomena it is supposed to control.

The root and fiber of the university is not equivalent to the public sphere. If a university believes that its educational mission requires it to prohibit all outside speakers, or to impose stringent tests of professional competence on all speakers allowed to address the campus, it would and should be free to do so.

[Robert C. Post is the Sterling professor of law at Yale Law School. He served as dean of the school from 2009 through spring 2017.]

[Commentary] I have been teaching First Amendment law to law students and undergraduates for more than 37 years. I have also litigated free speech cases, including at the Supreme Court. I believe that Chancellor Christ and the campus have done a superb job of adhering to the First Amendment, protecting free speech while ensuring the safety of students, staff, and faculty. But it’s also become clear to me that current college students are often ambivalent, or even hostile, to the idea of free speech on campus.

Robert Post’s premise is undoubtedly correct: Universities must evaluate the content of faculty and student work. But it does not follow that outside of this realm, free speech principles do not apply on campus. It is a logical fallacy to say that because basic free speech principles sometimes do not apply on campus, they must never apply.

[Erwin Chemerinsky is dean and Jesse H. Choper distinguished professor of law at the University of California Berkeley School of Law.]

[Commentary] Some sectors have learned to exploit the explosive possibilities of digital tools, while others by and large have not. I call this the “information gap.” The upshot is that information technologies have not lost their power and can in fact lead to a productivity resurgence. These results reinforce our hypothesis that a more rapid diffusion of information technology into the physical industries, such as healthcare, education, transportation, manufacturing, and energy, could substantially boost innovation and incomes in these sectors.

Cloud computing and 5G wireless networks are thus foundational platforms to increase economic opportunity to more people in more places.

[Bret Swanson is concurrently president of Entropy Economics LLC.]

[Commentary] Many Democrats have decried this Federal Communications Commission decision benefiting Sinclair, a conservative broadcaster with ties to Breitbart News. And while some conservatives are cheering the deal, the implications of FCC actions are troubling for most. The nonsensical decision to reinstitute the UHF discount will also open the door for NBC, CBS, ABC and Fox to buy local TV stations reaching more than 70 percent of US homes. Anyone who understands how these big media companies operate can see the danger. By owning local stations, the New York-based media networks could dictate local news coverage. With the planned elimination of the local studio rule, they will have a green light to do so.

Before approving the Sinclair merger, the FCC has a duty to engage in a comprehensive and open media-ownership proceeding — one that seeks public comment and input from Congress. Anything less raises questions about impartiality and jeopardizes the integrity of the commission. Eliminating ownership rules that have served us well for more than 30 years is a momentous change. The American people must play a role in that decision.

[Christopher Ruddy is chief executive of Newsmax Media.]

[Commentary] In Nov it will be 50 years since the Public Broadcasting Act, steeped in the Great Society idealism of President Lyndon Johnson’s administration, became law. The act turned programming like “Sesame Street,” “Reading Rainbow” and “Mr. Rogers Neighborhood” into true public goods. Now, on the silver anniversary of the act, it’s completely plausible that the Trump Administration might celebrate by making good on their threats to defund as much of the public broadcasting apparatus as they can.

While it’s unlikely NPR and PBS want this to happen, they have been preparing for a future without government money for a long time. The biggest stations have figured out how to bring in money without sacrificing quality. Still, the shift away from public money in public broadcasting has caused significant collateral damage: Public media, maybe unintentionally, now strives to serve an elite audience instead of an expansive and inclusive vision of the “public.” The hope is that more affluent audiences can be counted on to add to their closet full of pledge drive tote bags when the time comes. This is the same audience commercial news organizations look for so they can buy things advertisers sell. These target consumers have more news than they need. Perversely, that means even the most thought-provoking public media is used more for entertainment that anything else.

I worry if we continue to ignore the information needs of news consumers representing a wide swath of economic and demographic realities, we will deserve any loss of relevance we experience.

[Sarah Alvarez is the founder of Outlier Media, a data journalism service delivering high value information to low income news consumers in Detroit via SMS.]

[Commentary] It might seem that the prospects for a return to strong bi-partisan Internet policy, which began during the Clinton Administration, are no better now. There’s been no visible movement, for example, on a simple but effective compromise bill offered by senior Republicans in 2015. According to its sponsors, it remains on the table. But the stakes are about to get higher. The Federal Communications Commission is likely to vote before year-end to undo much of the Commission’s 2015 order reclassifying broadband Internet service providers as public utilities, an order which, almost as an after-thought, included the agency’s third attempt at network neutrality rules that could pass legal muster. Added urgency may help the stars align for serious negotiations in Congress.

For one thing, an inevitable legal challenge to the upcoming order will go nowhere. Though it may take a year or more to work its way through the courts, the FCC’s undo of its earlier order will almost certainly be upheld.

The time for a straightforward, uncontroversial legislative solution is now—not after the pro-utility advocates lose in court in another year or more, and not after another few turns of FCC Chairmen flipping the switch again and again. The net neutrality bill introduced in 2015--before the FCC needlessly reversed twenty years of bi-partisan policy--remains the best starting point we have. Assuming, that is, that Congress really wants to solve this problem once and for all.

[Larry Downes is the Project Director at Georgetown Center for Business and Public Policy.]

[Commentary] State-sponsored propaganda like the recently unmasked @TEN_GOP Twitter account is of very real concern for our democracy. But we should not allow the debate over Russian interference to crowd out concerns about homegrown misinformation, which was vastly more prevalent during and after the 2016 election. The problem isn’t that we’re only willing to listen to sources that share our political viewpoint; it’s that we’re too vulnerable as human beings to misinformation of all sorts. Given the limitations of human knowledge and judgment, it is not clear how to best protect people from believing false claims.

Brendan Nyhan is a professor of government at Dartmouth College.

Yusaku Horiuchi is a professor of government at Dartmouth College.

[Commentary] The European Union’s law “laying down measures concerning open internet access” came into force in 2016. After a year with the law on the books, telecom regulators across Europe have submitted compliance reports to the supervisory Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications (BEREC) and the European Commission. While no bad internet service providers (ISPs) or violations have emerged, a regulatory bureaucracy is growing because of the law. 

[Commentary] No matter how valuable the Lifeline program is in theory, it’s wasting millions of taxpayer dollars. It allows the telecommunications carriers who profit from the program to verify eligibility for their participants — and too many are turning a blind eye. Lifeline was poorly structured and badly executed from the start. The goal of providing low-income Americans help regaining their economic footing with phone and broadband service is worthwhile and admirable — but that doesn’t mean that any plan doing that is worthy of unequivocal support.

Sidestepping the problems in this terribly run program is a disservice to all participants as well as those footing the bill, and will endanger the program’s existence if we allow it to continue. I’ll remain engaged on this issue and committed to serious changes. In the meantime, I encourage my party, as well as my friends from across the aisle, to join me in pushing for oversight and accountability regardless of its political convenience.