Net Neutrality Stakeholders Finding Agreement, Misener Says
The net neutrality debate has evolved away from “bumper sticker” campaigns to a growing consensus among stakeholders, Amazon.com Vice President Paul Misener told an Institute for Policy Innovation seminar Thursday. Most agree network operators should have control over “housekeeping” issues of network management, such as blocking malware and downloads of illegal content. But differences remain, largely over the question of whether operators, if allowed to prioritize traffic, would wield their market power to favor services they offer, Misener said.
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This issue “need not be partisan,” Misener said. Net neutrality arguments were highly political five years ago, prompted in part by Republican-led legislation that could have prevented the FCC from enforcing non-discrimination rules. There was a period of “detente” after the bill died. Now the debate has taken on new intensity with an administration committed to regulating, he said, but stakeholders are starting to sit down and find areas of agreement. His appearance at a summit with an AT&T official and others opposed to neutrality rules reflects the more thoughtful mood, Misener said.
Given the complexity of the regulation, the FCC should have undertaken a thorough market analysis before embarking on a rulemaking, FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell told the seminar. The lengthy comment period will help provide expertise to the commission, and the Supreme Court’s decision in the Comcast case will also provide guidance, McDowell said, asking attendees to “tell us what you think.” Rules must be based on sound economics or they won’t stand judicial review, he said.
“We should ask ourselves, is the Internet broken?” McDowell said. And if it’s determined the Internet is broken, is government the best entity to solve the problem, he asked. “Do you really want us making these highly technical decisions” that may be more the province of engineers, he asked. The commission’s action also will be viewed closely by foreign governments that are also grappling with net neutrality issues. Overly prescriptive regulation could influence less-democratic powers to stifle Internet users’ rights of expression, he said.
“I agree with Paul Misener that we are at a very important moment,” said Mike McCurry, co-chairman of Arts + Labs, a coalition of creative and technology interests that support flexible network management. McCurry, former press secretary for President Bill Clinton, who advocated against regulation five years ago, said today’s debate is “more robust and transparent.” People are not talking past each other, he said. “The discussions are not about people slinging their slogans.”
McCurry supports “reasonable network management” that protects consumers from malware and unlawful content. But it’s still up in the air whether the commission has the legal authority to act on its own, which is why Congress is keeping a close eye on the process, he said: “I personally think we can get this right.”
But there is a risk that politics could intrude and spin the rulemaking into something that’s bad for Democrats, said McCurry, who describes himself as a “partisan Democrat.” This is the era of big government, and its intervention in the auto, financial and health care industries has conservative Republicans on the offense. If FCC rules are too proscriptive, he said, people may view it as Democrats trying to “socialize the Internet,” he said. “And you can just hear the tea party folks waving their tea bags when they [FCC] start down that path.”
Even with a White House that made net neutrality a campaign plank, the issue is not on the top of the agenda, McCurry said. “I meet with a lot of friends at the White House and the concern is jobs,” he said. So any regulation that could have a significant impact on industry will be examined closely from that perspective, he said. “It is incumbent on us to explain what our vision is,” he said, which means getting more clarity about what constitutes “reasonable” network management. He hopes the FCC won’t embark on a cumbersome regulation that “is going to require everyone in this room to load up on lawyers and lobbyists and spend the next five years down at the commission debating about stuff that engineers ought to be deciding.”
There is a “huge risk” that net neutrality rules could inhibit innovation, said NCTA President Kyle McSlarrow, who agreed that defining “reasonable” is important. Regulators should have a “special humility” when writing net neutrality rules, given the potential impact they could have on investment and consumers, said AT&T Vice President Hank Hultquist. Rules that define broadband Internet access “very broadly,” could raise questions about “how the multitude of applications may fare.”
“The touchstone for us” is the lack of competition at the edge of the network, Misener said. Allowing network operators to charge big users more “makes perfect sense,” he said, saying Amazon pays “handsomely” for its Internet access. But it ought to be “explicitly stated in the rules” that if network operators are allowed to create new technologies or add capacity that allows them to provide new services, they not be allowed to degrade other traffic in favor of their own.