Will President Obama Abandon the Open Internet?
Wow! My buddies over at Free Press never fail to entertain me. They hide behind smoke and mirrors, use manipulative language, and outright shady tactics to support their claims. It is laughable. I could pick Joe’s article apart limb by limb, but I haven’t the time.
Here’s the deal, lets imagine for a moment that the internet was the strip mall industry, and that the telcos are the developers, contractors, and real-estate holders. For almost 20 years the economic ecosystem of “strip-mall” development has been healthy and thriving. Suddenly, “public interest” groups are taking aim at the owners of these strip malls; combating the possibility that they might charge more money for larger retail space in their strip malls.
The “developers”, to this point have allowed entry to their space at a first-come, first-serve, flat rate basis. With increased demand, the economically sound decision would be to perhaps offer tiered price points for entry; although at this point it is a mere conceptual idea. By doing this, the developers ensure continued investment in development, which in turn, provides more opportunity to bring the convenience of “strip malls” to rural, under served, and non-served areas. Not to mention, it creates a wealth of jobs for construction and maintenance of these new “strip malls”.
How could anyone argue this? The economics are sound and the practices are not predatory. Well, let me tell you how Free Press can argue this. They, pretend to serve the “public” when in fact they serve the “retail corporations” (i.e. content creators such as Google) that serve their customers in the space constructed, owned and operated by the “developers.” Added to that is their desire to protect their own retail front that has benefited largely from the “developers’” current business model, the status quo of those who are in “strip mall” friendly areas already, and their extremely cost effective means to distribute products in the current “strip mall” establishment.
In other words, if you live in an area that the developers would need further investment to bring the convenience of strip malls to your area; then you are not within the public they are interested in. If you are not a coroporation – though they would never call these companies by their real names – that produces content for the internet, you are not a part of their interest either. If you are not already a frequent “strip mall” shopper you are not the public that Free Press, Public Knowledge, and Color of Change are interested it.
Before you agree with Free Press and net netutrality carefully consider where you fall within the “public” as they would have you think of it. Then think of how much entitlement we all should have to something such as the internet, which we don’t own, invest in, or maintain. Just because a tool is benefical does not mean that we have the right to “power grab,” the use of it from it’s owner.
At times I want to join Mr. White in laughing at the position that Color of Change, Free Press, Public Knowledge, and the Open Internet Coalition take in regards to net neutrality. The leaders of these groups must be big fans of Tom Cruise’s Minority Report. In that movie, they arrested you on the probability that you were going to commit a crime in the future. The net neutrality bunch forget that at the end of the movie, the project was shut down because of the damage precognition brought about.
Mr. White raises the same point and to great effect. Why introduce burdensome regulations to stifle private ownership and investment on the hunch that a broadband provider might do something bad in the future? It makes no sense.