Hey, Siri, what is the single, perfect architecture of the new broadband media marketplace?

[Commentary] Good question. Because the media marketplace is exploding with new ideas. All of this complexity and experimentation is inconvenient to those who are trying to regulate the Internet, as if it should conform to their specific vision. The digital world turns out to be a lot more complex, nuanced, and morally ambiguous than the advocates of network neutrality, Title II, and other regulatory impositions want to believe (and most certainly more complex than they want you to believe).

As we’ve said from the beginning, the relative prices and capabilities of computer processing, data storage, and communications bandwidth -- along with software up and down the stack -- are constantly changing. The networks, devices, content, and business models are thus also in continual flux. Internet infrastructure providers and entrepreneurs mix these resources in various ways to offer new products and services, some of which thrive and others that fail. As the last 20 years showed, however, there is no fixed network architecture or pure business model that must be, or can be, enshrined in law. The open-ended nature of the net is what has made it so surprisingly successful.

[Bret Swanson is president of Entropy Economics LLC]