Seattle Times (Op-Ed): Restore net neutrality, crucial to democracy

The battle for network neutrality (aka the open internet) is back. The chair of the Federal Communications Commission, with a new majority finally in place after almost three years of a deadlocked 2-2 commission caused by a dawdling Senate, has started the ball rolling toward a vote, which hopefully will happen early in the new year. It’s something that should have been instituted years ago.

In fact, it actually was on the books — until then-President Donald Trump’s FCC chair, Ajit Pai, ditched the rules, largely at the behest of the big internet service providers like Verizon, AT&T and Comcast. Net neutrality rules were not only on the books, but were also court-approved. That should have been the end of the matter. Instead, today we have no such rules.

Without open internet rules, there is nothing to stop the telecom giants from throttling your service, blocking your access to the net, giving priority access to their own subsidiaries or giving preference to wealthy content providers willing to pay high rates for priority carriage. That means fast lanes for the well-to-do and slow lanes for the rest of us.

Without rules, the ISPs don’t need to worry about consumer concerns like privacy, or fear of being disconnected, or wanting to know what we are paying for when the ever-increasing phone and cable bills come due each month. That’s no world in which citizens can take full advantage of the internet. It’s no world where competition among carriers can flourish. And it’s no world where the FCC can protect broadband from national security threats in an increasingly dangerous world. It’s gatekeeper control, pure and simple.

Nor is it a world where free speech and a vibrant civic dialogue are adequately protected. The internet was supposed to be our town square of democracy, a place for voters to inform themselves, to organize, and to make themselves heard. There is a diversity dimension here, too. Suppose an ISP doesn’t like the message of a civil rights or social justice site. Denied access, how do these groups get their messages out? Allowing a few monopoly-seeking behemoths to censor citizen speech is a direct threat to our democracy.

The fight over net neutrality should never have happened. The broadband internet was born in the telecommunications world and, but for the opposition of the ISPs, would have stayed there. As a telecommunications service, it would have been subject to the consumer and competition safeguards provided by Title II of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, like the telephone on whose back it evolved. But the ISPs wanted none of that. So, they sent a veritable army of industry lawyers and lobbyists to the FCC and spread buckets of campaign money around Capitol Hill to make sure nothing got in their way. I was a commissioner at the FCC (in a dissenting minority) when it voted to reclassify broadband from being a telecommunications service to an “information service.” That removed broadband from all the consumer and other protections mentioned above and put it in another part of the law where there was little to fear from the agency.

As this new battle heats up, we will be bombarded with ISP messages (aka propaganda) saying all is well, they’re taking care of any problems, and don’t load them down with unnecessary rules. Well, no one at the FCC is pushing for heavy-handed regulation. Nor am I. We just want to make sure that something so central to our future has credible public interest oversight.

History shows that consumer protection, privacy, transparency, competition, and national security are not the driving forces behind huge consolidated corporations. They are democratic virtues that require protection through public interest oversight. We must put rules in place so everyone knows they are there. My bet is that once there is certainty about well-designed net neutrality rules, not only will consumers and citizens be better served, but even the ISPs will begin to understand this is the field on which they must do business.

We are behind other nations not only in net neutrality, but broadband adoption, the cost of connectivity and the extent of government oversight. Should the ISPs win this round, their power can only grow. Already we see the ISP distributors of broadband buying up the content producers (e.g., Comcast/NBCU). Combining distribution control with content control is the essence of monopoly. It’s time to put the brakes on the ISPs. They should not be free from oversight, free to throttle, free to block, free to deny privacy, free to favor a few at the expense of the many, and free to run roughshod over perhaps the most liberating and opportunity-creating communications tool in all of history.

So, get involved. Let the FCC, your elected representatives, your colleagues and friends know this is important to you and your country. Because it is.

To view this op-ed online, click here.