Our domestic regulatory policy debate is continually hobbled by the need to conduct it in the "terms of the past" rather than in accordance with the reality of the networks and services of today, let alone the needs of tomorrow's network, service and applications developers and providers. At the very least, the process of debating thorough-going reform of the Act and the agency would have the benefit of focusing attention on the functions the agency performs well, that should be left alone, and those is performs poorly, that should either be reformed or given to another agency or department of government better suited to the particular function.

As the 12-year mostly uninterrupted reign of Republicans on Capitol Hill came to a close over the weekend, some trade legislation was finally approved. This should be cause for rejoicing, but the fact is that these relatively innocuous bills needed to be crammed onto a Christmas-tree bill passed in the dead of night in the December of a lame duck when everyone wanted to go home. That does not augur well for the 110th Congress; hostility can be found in both parties against trade, but it's unfortunately higher in the Democratic Party right now.

I've written here and elsewhere about perhaps history's most articulate trade advocate, the 19th Century wit Frederic Bastiat. He's often referred to as an economist, but perhaps the most accurate description of him would be an economic journalist. Here in the 21st Century, the economic arguments in favor of an open economy and free trade seem irrefutable, yet more and more politicians -- and more and more members of the public -- are turning away from trade. The economists clearly are failing to get the truth across. We need another economic journalist to writ in language people understand, and we need politicians brave enough to do what's necessary to make a more open economy a reality.

I received an e-mail late last night from a scholar in Europe wondering if we'll be hearing more about network neutrality in the next Congress as a result of Democratic gains there. Short answer: yes. But it's really more complicated than that. I'd invite readers to share their own speculation on what will happen with NN in the next Congress in the comments field below; above that field I'll share my own thoughts.

Some of you may have seen the paper PFF published yesterday by Dr. Alfred Kahn titled "A Democratic Voice of Caution on Network Neutrality." All of us at PFF were quite pleased to be able to publishe the perspective of one of the country's leading experts on deregulation. Dr. Kahn is the author of The Economics of Regulation: Principles and Institutions, and led the deregulation of the airline and trucking industries under President Carter. The piece originated as a comment Dr. Kahn posted to a PFF blog entry last week commenting on the opposition to network neutrality regulations by another prominent Damocrat, Bill Kennard.

I think Dr. Kahn's perspective is important for many reasons, perhaps primarily because he is a renowned expert on regulation and markets. But I think it's also important that a man who calls himself a liberal Democrat points out that it may not be wise for the Democratic Party to align itself with pro-regulatory forces such as those behind network neutrality. (Note he doesn't dismiss net neutrality, just as I don't, he just feels current laws and agencies can protect consumers.)

Tech policy traditionally has not been partisan. I pointed that out regarding IP policy at a recent Congressional Seminar we hosted. We also haven't seen it in telecom. Tauzin-Dingell was a bipartisan bill that had Republicans and Democrats backing it and Republicans and Democrats opposing it. Bill Kennard (D) and Michael Powell (R) both were deregulatory in their own way. Even the uber-liberal Reed Hundt gave us spectrum auctions.

As an independent, I dislike partisanship creeping into digital age policy debates. I worked for Harry Reid (D), then married a woman who became a top aide to Nancy Kassebaum (R). I've voted Democrat, Republican and Libertarian. Bottom line, I'm extremely resistant to the notion of pledging my loyalty to any particular group, when it's quite likely that group will choose to back policies I disagree with. I'd much prefer to form alliances with like-minded people, D or R.

This year the Democratic Party endorsed network neutrality regulations as part of its party platform. The Republican Party by and large has lined up against it. But I take comfort in the positions of Bill Kennard and Alfred Kahn, who I doubt would say they are "with Republicans" on this issue. They likely would say they are with markets, and no party has a monopoly on respecting markets. Let's hope whoever is running Capitol Hill next year leaves partisanship out when dealing with tech policy and markets. We'll all be better off.

The net neutrality debate is often portrayed as a battle between huge ISPs and huge tech companies, and so on some level it is. You also have free-market scholars arguing against burdensome regulation (including PFF) and commons advocates arguing for regulations to ensure a "dumb pipe" that will provide no limits on end-users. But what about innocent parties trapped in the middle of this debate? Who are they, you ask? Well, how about a small broadband ISP? The net neutrality regulation proponents say they want more competition in broadband; one of those competitors posted an intriguing post on Dave Farber's Interesting People list this week. He didn't address net neutrality, but the points he raised are central to the debate.

Brett Glass of the ISP Lariat.net (serving Laramie, Wyoming) was responding to a post involving someone being kicked off of a Verizon Wireless network for using too much broadband bandwidth. He said networks are plagued by bandwidth hogs, often the result of viruses, etc., but sometimes it's caused by the actions of a single user. "The real problem," he said, "is that many consumers are unwilling to pay for the network capacity they use."

When is it okay to discriminate? When it improves the performance of the network. That was one of the messages of Carnegie Mellon's Dave Farber, known in some circles as the Grandfather of the Internet, at a session on network neutrality hosted by The Progress & Freedom Foundation Tuesday. The National Press Club event was the public debut of PFF's book on the subject, Net Neutrality or Net Neutering: Should Broadband Internet Services be Regulated? It's edited by PFF's Tom Lenard an the Free State Foundation's Randy May (Randy being a former PFF colleague). I'll direct you to its listing on Amazon, despite that company's position on NN.

What if Google's lobbying efforts fall short and it can't secure net neutrality language in a new statute? Reuters reports:

"If the legislators...insist on neutrality, we will be happy. If they do not put it in, we will be less happy but then we will have to wait and see whether or not there actually is any abuse," Vint Cerf, a Google vice president and one of the pioneers of the Internet, told a news conference in Bulgaria.

"If we are not successful in our arguments ... then we will simply have to wait until something bad happens and then we will make known our case to the Department of Justice's anti-trust division," he said Tuesday.

Waiting to see if there is actually an abuse. Relying on antitrust law to punish abusers of market power. Where have I heard that? Oh yes, from PFF fellows on a near-daily basis (see our Net Neutrality primer, and recent op-eds by Ray Gifford [here and here] and Kyle Dixon [here] and testimony by Ray and Kyle, for current examples), and from the larger intellectual community that participated in the DACA project (see recent DACA net neutrality statement). Glad to see a NN supporter realizes there is an alternative to legislation that could prevent future Internet innovation.

UPDATE (4:08 pm): We now have a button on our PFF home page, directly below the Aspen link, leading those interested to more information on net neutrality. The page is here.

Security breaches involving the loss or theft of massive amounts of personal data have revived the call on Capitol Hill for some kind of security bill to preempt inconsistent action by the roughly 30 states now considering bills related to consumer data. Unfortunately, the whole furor has moved in the direction of reviving legislative interest in European-style data protection rules, which would broadly regulate the collection and use of consumer information by legitimate businesses.

This would be a very bad thing. People acting in the economy need information about other people to make good decisions. Startups and new businesses in particular, especially those going up against an established competitor who already has established consumer relationships,

Last week I mentioned how some net-neutrality legislation proponents had taken a technical difficulty between Craig's List and Cox Communications' outside security provider, Authentium, and turned it into the latest cause celebre. Like many urban legends, the great Cox conspiracy just won't die. The latest to promulgate misinformation is Senator Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) in the Wall Street Journal. I have supported Wyden on banning Internet taxes, been dismayed at his overconfidence in government solutions to spam and spyware, and have been appalled at his net-neutrality legislation, in particular comments he made at a press conference promoting the bill where he basically advocated a government taking of the Internet, saying the US government really owned it anyway. But his letter to the Journal is full of falsehoods, including on the Cox incident:

Cox Communications, a broadband provider that also has a large classified advertising business, is currently blocking access to craigslist.org, a large, free classified Web site that competes with Cox.

No one was blocked, although some Cox customers did get very slow connections, due to snafus on the parts of both Craig's List and Authentium. For more information on what's really happening with Cox and where Wyden is confused, see Richard Bennett here and here and also see The Only Republican in San Francisco. The former journalist in me appreciates blogs but still counts on the mainstream media, or MSM as bloggers call it, to tell it like it really is. I hope somebody in the MSM calls Wyden on this reckless letter.

I had the pleasure last evening of speaking at an America's Future Foundation event titled "Should the Government Regulate the Net?" AFF consists of conservatives or libertarians in their 20s and 30s; in just over a year I'll turn 40 and I suppose will join America's Past. But I enjoyed the AFF crowd, which filled to standing-room a banquet room in the Rayburn House Office Building. I particularly enjoyed their probing questions. In my prepared remarks I sought to address some of the hysteria surrounding the net neutrality debate, and in so doing evoked the possibility of a mutant snakehead rising out of the Potomac River, walking down the Mall and devouring the US Capitol. That, I suspect, isn't likely to happen, but neither are the scary stories we often hear, as was made clear by a fellow panelist, Heritage's James Gattuso.