For this week we read a few articles (linked at the end of this post) on the recent changes in FCC regulations for ISPs. In response, we were asked to answer the question: should ISPs be more regulated or will this stifle innovation. This is my response:
This question is one of the biggest challenges around technology for policymakers - striking a balance between enough regulation to provide protections and too much regulation that will stifle innovation. The internet is still in its infancy, but I believe that recently we have seen enough evidence to know that we need better protections for citizens that use the internet.
The tension outlined in Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Ajit Pai’s op-ed is an interesting one that I hadn’t fully understood in this debate before reading this: He was against the move in 2015 to regulate the internet “like a public utility” and moving it out from under the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) jurisdiction. Internet companies, however remained under the FTC purview when this happened. Pai calls this unfair treatment, which I agree with, but not for the same free-market capitalist reasons that motivate him.
I believe that the internet is and should be treated like a public utility and that both the ISPs and “edge” businesses should be regulated (aka “treated fairly”) in how they use data. But in thinking about other utility companies, I couldn’t think of another that has so many businesses built on top of it. This is new territory and it’s going to take a while to figure out how to regulate this new and changing landscape.
There were a few other arguments in the Forbes article in support of Pai’s op-ed that I didn’t agree with. The argument that the regulation of ISPs would have barely benefited consumers and would pass on extra costs was troubling to me. Perhaps, like congestion pricing, this is the externality we can’t see right now and need to pay for in order to ensure privacy and security. However, another way of thinking about it is that if there were more competition in the ISP space, costs would actually go down for the consumer - the government is the only actor that can make this happen and needs to be more proactive. In a capitalist society, I’m not optimistic that much progress will be made in this direction since internet companies - although not ISPs, according to Pai - profit off of people’s data by serving them ads to buy things. Just because ISPs don’t technically user consumer data in this way doesn’t mean that we don’t need protections around this issue - on the flip side, this is the reason that regulations are crucial. Innovation should not come at the cost of human well-being.
What does the new ISP data-sharing rollback actually change?
The Nullification Of FCC’s Broadband Privacy Rules: What It Really Means For Consumers
No, Republicans didn’t just strip away your Internet privacy rights