Technology

Debating Net Neutrality (While We Still Have An Internet)

Four well-versed experts debate the future of the Internet.

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The FCC has made no bones about its commitment to turning the Internet into a throttled plaything of regional ISP monopolies, short-selling both consumers and content providers in an almost comical effort to declare a fully government supported market perversion as a “free market” because it fits their carefully crafted vision of capitalism as “whatever the rich people who contribute to our campaign say it is.”

To date, the most compelling argument in favor of the FCC’s policy is a 1:16 video of a high-ranking government employee playing with fidget spinners and demonstrating such a gross lack of understanding of the Internet that it’s become something of a microcosm of the era of incompetence.

Thankfully, we still have Intelligence Squared U.S. to fall back on. The series continues its effort to raise the intellectual bar for discourse in the country one event at a time with a timely discussion of Net Neutrality tonight at 7:30 p.m. Eastern, in a debate held in partnership with Northwestern’s Pritzker School of Law. In defense of Net Neutrality are Mitchell Baker, chairwoman of the Mozilla Corporation and Foundation, and Tom Wheeler, former Chair of the FCC. They’ll be debating Nick Gillespie, editor at large of Reason, and former FCC economist Michael Katz.

I’m going to go ahead and predict Gillespie’s take will be an entirely non-responsive “I recognize that state and local governments have broken the market for Internet access… so let’s keep wishing for unicorns to solve that problem rather than take any federal action that might ameliorate the harms.” Look, we all agree that a million and one ISPs competing for business would be terrific, wake me up when there’s a feasible plan to break this current logjam.

In any event, watch the debate here:

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