IPcentral Weblog
  The DACA Blog

Wednesday, February 8, 2006

 
DACA and Net Neutrality
(previous | next)
 

According to the February 7 edition of TR Daily, speaking to reporters after the recent Net Neutrality hearing, Senator Stevens said, "I think net neutrality should be the basis of any legislation" developed by the Senate Commerce Committee. Then he added, when asked to define it: "It's not easy to do." TR Daily says he compared it to "defining a vacuum."

There in a nutshell you have the reason why net neutrality emphatically should not be the basis for new telecom legislation, or even included in new telecom legislation as a subject warranting special treatment. There will only be lots of trouble down the road--and not very far down--if Congress tries to write an anticipatory law prohibiting something that is like defining a vacuum. This time, perhaps unlike with respect to the 1996 Act, we definitely know enough to know that the marketplace and the technology is changing so rapidly that any static prohibition that purports to enforce "neutrality" and "nondiscrimination" throughout the vast network of networks that comprises the Internet is likely to end up stifling in unforeseen ways investments and innovations from all quarters--in infrastructure, applications, and content.

It would be far better for Congress to adopt the approach that is embodied in S. 2113, Sen. DeMint's Digital Age Communications Act. Under this approach, consumers or competitors would file net neutrality-like complaints under the act's "unfair competition" standard. Then the FCC would adjudicate the complaint in a specific fact-based context that would take into account the dynamics of the market structure, the number of competitors, the impact on consumer welfare from the claimed abuse or from proposed remedies, and the like. In this way, if a determination is made, in light of marketplace conditions relief is warranted to remedy the claimed abuse (say, a some modest preferential arrangement between Google and you-name the-provider-that-makes-the-deal) then the agency can tailor the relief and revisit it as conditions warrant.)

Hopefully, Sen. Stevens will follow where his logic leads. Rather than writing into law broad prohibitions for something that is like defining a vacuum, why not write a law that prohibits unfair competition and then let the agency proceed on a case-by-case basis.

posted by Randolph May @ 2:46 PM |

Share |

Link to this Entry | Printer-Friendly

Post a Comment:





 
Blog Main
RSS Feed  
Recent Posts
  EFF-PFF Amicus Brief in Schwarzenegger v. EMA Supreme Court Videogame Violence Case
New OECD Study Finds That Improved IPR Protections Benefit Developing Countries
Hubris, Cowardice, File-sharing, and TechDirt
iPhones, DRM, and Doom-Mongers
"Rogue Archivist" Carl Malamud On How to Fix Gov2.0
Coping with Information Overload: Thoughts on Hamlet's BlackBerry by William Powers
How Many Times Has Michael "Dr. Doom" Copps Forecast an Internet Apocalypse?
Google / Verizon Proposal May Be Important Compromise, But Regulatory Trajectory Concerns Many
Two Schools of Internet Pessimism
GAO: Wireless Prices Plummeting; Public Knowledge: We Must Regulate!
Archives by Month
  September 2010
August 2010
July 2010
June 2010
  - (see all)
Archives by Topic
  - A La Carte
- Add category
- Advertising & Marketing
- Antitrust & Competition Policy
- Appleplectics
- Books & Book Reviews
- Broadband
- Cable
- Campaign Finance Law
- Capitalism
- Capitol Hill
- China
- Commons
- Communications
- Copyright
- Cutting the Video Cord
- Cyber-Security
- DACA
- Digital Americas
- Digital Europe
- Digital Europe 2006
- Digital TV
- E-commerce
- e-Government & Transparency
- Economics
- Education
- Electricity
- Energy
- Events
- Exaflood
- Free Speech
- Gambling
- General
- Generic Rant
- Global Innovation
- Googlephobia
- Googlephobia
- Human Capital
- Innovation
- Intermediary Deputization & Section 230
- Internet
- Internet Governance
- Internet TV
- Interoperability
- IP
- Local Franchising
- Mass Media
- Media Regulation
- Monetary Policy
- Municipal Ownership
- Net Neutrality
- Neutrality
- Non-PFF Podcasts
- Ongoing Series
- Online Safety & Parental Controls
- Open Source
- PFF
- PFF Podcasts
- Philosophy / Cyber-Libertarianism
- Privacy
- Privacy Solutions
- Regulation
- Search
- Security
- Software
- Space
- Spectrum
- Sports
- State Policy
- Supreme Court
- Taxes
- The FCC
- The FTC
- The News Frontier
- Think Tanks
- Trade
- Trademark
- Universal Service
- Video Games & Virtual Worlds
- VoIP
- What We're Reading
- Wireless
- Wireline
Archives by Author
PFF Blogosphere Archives
We welcome comments by email - look for a link to the author's email address in the byline of each post. Please let us know if we may publish your remarks.
 










The Progress & Freedom Foundation