As Hance Haney notes, yesterday’s proposed rules on net neutrality from the FCC are not as far-reaching as one might have expected, but they’re certainly not tame, either. One thing that grabs my attention is how the FCC is falling into an old and pernicious trap of top-down regulation. It is setting up artificial categories for services that it will then endeavor to regulate differently–something that rarely works.
Acknowledging that net neutrality rules read broadly would prohibit certain socially beneficial offerings that ISPs could make, the FCC said in its announcement that it is
seeking comment on how it should address “managed” or “specialized” services, which are Internet-Protocol-based offerings provided over the same networks used for broadband Internet access services. While the proceeding will seek input on how best to define and treat such services, managed services could include voice, video, and enterprise business services, or specialized applications like telemedicine, smart grid, or eLearning offerings. These services may provide consumer benefits and lead to increased deployment of broadband networks.
The Notice asks how the Commission should define the category of managed or specialized services, what policies should apply to them, and how to ensure that broadband providers’ ability to innovate, develop valuable new services, and experiment with new technologies and business models can co-exist with the preservation of the free and open Internet on which consumers and businesses of all sizes depend.
What’s amazing about this is that the FCC is enacting net neutrality rules to protect innovation on the internet, yet if innovation on the internet has taught us anything, it’s that it is unpredictable. It cannot be defined ahead of time. Any classification system the Commission conjures will be outdated the moment it is adopted. As a result, policies that make sense at first will be quickly outpaced by innovation and will turn out to be misguided. Just consider the decade-plus of confusion the “telecommunications,” “telecommunications service,” “cable service,” and “information service” classifications wrought.
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