Policy: Pro-Title II

Context: I was talking about the necessity of net neutrality with a friend who is CEO of a small online business. He sent me a link to Pro-Neutrality, Anti-Title II, which was originally titled "Ajit Pai is Right". He asked for my comments. They have been slightly revised.

I'm glad he changed the title from "Why Ajit Pai is Right".

I, too, am pro-neutrality while simultaneously seeing the issues with the Title II legislation. It's too long, overly complex, and puts some restrictions on ISPs that even I think are unnecessary. It's imperfect, like most laws.

However, Chairman Ajit Pai is not "right," not remotely, not about anything he's said recently. A recent Verge article points out the ridiculousness of anti-net neutrality propaganda spread by the FCC under Pai. The LA Times also points out that "if [Pai] really believed [that protecting "internet freedom" requires reevaluating regulation], he wouldn't have to surround his policy proposals with a bodyguard of misrepresentations". Pai has been consistently lying to sell his plan to remove Title II regulations, so he can't be "right." Pai doesn't even seem to agree with Thompson that neutrality is a good thing. Thompson only agrees with Pai that the regulation is unnecessary.

Thompson argues that regulation is unnecessary because "there is no evidence that harm exists in the sort of systematic way that justifies heavily regulating ISPs". He's partially right. Net neutrality violations are few. I'd argue that fears of FCC action have been the keeping ISPs honest. Thompson says "Comcast had already removed its restrictions [on BitTorrent], not for fear of regulatory oversight, but by making technical changes to its network to better handle BitTorrent traffic" but he provides no proof for his claim that it wasn't fear of oversight that motivated Comcast to make those technical changes. At that point customers had already complained and a federal court was already looking into their behavior.

I would usually agree that it's bad to make pre-emptive regulatory law before the law has been broken. But ISPs have violated net neutrality before, as Thompson admits, just not systematically. This lowered bar might still be worth considering if it wasn't for the fact that ISPs have screwed their customers consistently and systematically in every other way they can. That's why ISPs are among America's Most Hated Companies with Comcast taking first place on that link.

There is no uncertainty here. We know what ISPs will do when given free reign. And while pressure from the media and citizens might be helpful in curbing the behavior given the current furor, it's extremely exhausting (at least for me), and not as effective as having a specific government bureau for handling this sort of thing. Title II is not perfect, but it's better than nothing.