WASHINGTON – By now, you’ve likely heard plenty about the subject of “net neutrality,” and I’d wager most of what you’ve listened to and read was staunchly against the Federal Communications Commission dumping its current rules, and in favor of continuing to classify ISPs as “common carriers” under Title II of the Communications Act.
Even if it’s only to give the other side of the debate a fair shake, I think it’s worth playing Devil’s Advocate with net neutrality, examining the counter-arguments for any merit they may have.
At their core, most of the arguments against maintaining the status quo of FCC policy boil down to a single word: Regulation. Of all internet policy stakeholders, adult entertainment entrepreneurs should understand ISPs cringing at that.
In April, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai gave a speech explaining why he believes a reexamination of the FCC’s net neutrality rules is in order. In the speech, Pai hailed the wisdom of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which he said represented a bipartisan decision that the policy of the U.S. should be to “preserve the vibrant and competitive free market that presently exists for the internet … unfettered by Federal or State regulation.
“But two years ago, the federal government’s approach suddenly changed,” Pai said. “The FCC, on a party-line vote, decided to impose a set of heavy-handed regulations upon the internet. It decided to slap an old regulatory framework called ‘Title II’ — originally designed in the 1930s for the Ma Bell telephone monopoly — upon thousands of internet service providers, big and small. It decided to put the federal government at the center of the internet.”
If you’re familiar with the basic orientation of most Republican officials and policymakers, you should be able to feel the seething antipathy dripping from Pai’s rhetoric as he uttered the words “heavy-handed regulations” and “federal government.”
(Of course, many Republicans feel quite differently about government regulation when it comes to targeting abortion providers or medicinal marijuana or pornography or any number of other issues that get their constituents hot and bothered … but that’s a whole different kettle of rant.)
In this case, though, might there be merit to what Pai says about the government imposing unnecessary regulations in the name of fixing a problem that isn’t there?
At least one billionaire reality TV star with terrible hair thinks so. No, not that billionaire reality TV star with terrible hair. I’m talking about Mark Cuban.
“That will fuck everything up,” Cuban said in 2015, referring to the FCC’s plan to reclassify ISPs as common carriers under Title II. “Net neutrality is just a demonization of big companies.”
Cuban also dismissed Netflix’s claims its customers were subject to bandwidth throttling by Comcast until the streaming giant paid the ISP to assure optimal delivery speed, saying the whole thing was merely “a battle between two fairly large companies” of the sort that “happens in business every day.”
Cuban always has said his opposition doesn’t stem from being opposed to an “open internet” in principle; rather, he’s just worried about a group of FCC commissioners regulating the internet.
“Having them overseeing the internet scares the shit out of me,” Cuban said.
It should be noted, however, as much as Cuban and Pai argue the internet “wasn’t broken” before the FCC’s reclassification of ISPs in 2015, one could just as persuasively argue the internet hasn’t been broken in the two years since the FCC made that change.
Pai asserted in his April speech there was no legal or factual basis to believe we needed the FCC to codify net neutrality in its policies. As he saw it, the whole thing was merely a political ploy.
“Days after a disappointing 2014 midterm election, and in order to energize a dispirited base, the White House released an extraordinary YouTube video instructing the FCC to implement Title II regulations,” Pai said. “This was a transparent attempt to compromise the agency’s independence.”
As for concern the FCC’s net neutrality policies will lead ISPs to invest less in developing new infrastructure, Pai claims the facts clearly support the predictions.
“Two years ago, I warned that we were making a serious mistake,” Pai said. “Most importantly, I said that Title II regulation would reduce investment in broadband infrastructure. It’s basic economics: The more heavily you regulate something, the less of it you’re likely to get.
“So what happened after the Commission adopted Title II? Sure enough, infrastructure investment declined,” Pai continued. “Among our nation’s 12 largest internet service providers, domestic broadband capital expenditures decreased by 5.6 percent, or $3.6 billion, between 2014 and 2016, the first two years of the Title II era. This decline is extremely unusual. It is the first time that such investment has declined, outside of a recession, in the internet era.”
I’m not sure Pai’s fellow Republicans got the memo stating we weren’t in a recession between 2014 and 2016, but his broader point about the stifling effect of federal regulations is still worth considering.
There’s no shortage of adult companies that have fretted over the years about the prospect of increased operational costs due to changes in 2257 regulations, or decreased sales if they’re forced to use condoms in their movies. In this sense, I should think it would be easy for porn companies to understand both Pai’s and Cuban’s concerns about FCC-imposed net neutrality.
None of this is to say the counter-arguments to Pai and Cuban aren’t more persuasive, or adult companies are wrong in expressing their apprehension about the rollback of the FCC’s current policies. All I’m saying is the arguments Pai and Cuban make aren’t completely out of left field, or entirely without basis in fact or history.
In the end, I think the FCC will adopt Pai’s proposed changes in policy — but I also believe it will be an immensely unpopular decision, one that leads Congress to codify net neutrality in federal law. If I’m right about what they’ll do and how, Congress will simultaneously prohibit ISPs from discriminating against any manner of legal content, but allow ISPs to establish the much-reviled notion of “fast and slow lanes” on the internet.
Where this all leads eventually, I have no idea.
One thing I do know however: Billionaire reality TV stars with terrible hair tend to get what they want in this world — for better or for worse.
