The End of the Permissionless Web

[Commentary] The first generation of the Internet did not go well for regulators. Despite early proposals to register websites and require government approval for business practices, the Internet in the US developed largely without bureaucratic control and became an unstoppable engine of innovation and economic growth. Regulators don't plan to make the same mistake with the next generation of innovations.

Bureaucrats and prosecutors are moving in to undermine services that use the Internet in new ways to offer everything from getting a taxi to using self-driving cars to finding a place to stay. What has made the Internet revolutionary is that it's permissionless. No one had to get approval from Washington or city hall to offer Google searches, Facebook profiles or Apple apps, as Adam Thierer of George Mason University notes in his new book, "Permissionless Innovation." A bipartisan consensus in the 1990s led Washington to allow commercial development of the Internet without onerous regulations. Unlike the earlier telecommunications and broadcasting industries, Internet entrepreneurs didn't need licenses to proceed, just good ideas. The hardest thing for government regulators to do is to regulate less, which is why the development of the open-innovation Internet was a rare achievement. The regulation the digital economy needs most now is for permissionless innovation to become the default law of the land, not the exception.