Government Is Crashing the Internet Party

The Internet, more than any invention in history, brings together a perfect storm of free market forces: low barriers to entry, unencumbered contact between consumers and providers, and instant feedback for new ideas. It has become a thriving exhibition of the power of free people operating in a free market to create prosperity and opportunity. Predictably, the federal government wants to crash the party.

The Federal Communications Commission’s recent 332-page plan to regulate the Internet is being sold as “net neutrality,” which is an existing concept predicated on preventing Internet service providers from creating “fast lanes” and “slow lanes” for different content. But there are several significant problems:

1. While the FCC plan supposedly seeks to prevent ISPs from playing favorites, it does so by giving that power to another entity: government. The answer to correcting injustice in an economy is to increase consumer power, not government power.
2. The issue of ISPs creating different speed lanes is not the injustice that it is made out to be.
3. The primary function of the FCC’s plan goes far beyond the goal of net neutrality. It would use Title II of the Communications Act of 1934 to label Internet service providers as public utilities.