Op-Ed

[Commentary] The rise of what we might call “cheap speech” has fundamentally altered both how we communicate and the nature of our politics, endangering the health of our democracy.

The path back to a more normal political scene will not be easy. In the old days, just a handful of TV networks controlled the airwaves, and newspapers served as gatekeepers for news and opinion content. A big debate back in the 1980s and earlier was how to enable free expression for those who did not own or work for a media company and wanted to get a message out. It seems cheap speech, despite its undeniable benefits, has come with a steep price for our democracy.

[Richard L. Hasen is the Chancellor’s Professor of Law and Political Science at UC Irvine]

[Commentary] The Rural Electrification Administration (REA) built on the efforts of another New Deal project. The Tennessee Valley Authority was among the very first creations of President Franklin Roosevelt’s administration. The TVA had several purposes, including navigation improvements and flood control, but among its biggest was generating electricity for some of the poorest sections of the country. Everyone knows about the high-speed internet deficit, so why hasn’t anything like a TVA for the internet been created?

One answer is that Congress has been controlled by politicians who have vilified all government programs and who do not want to create new ones. The bigger problem is that the very people who would benefit from rural broadband keep voting for those same politicians and things are even worse at the state level. Dozens of rural communities have tried to set up internet co-ops, on the model of the REA, but in response nearly two dozen states have passed laws making it nearly impossible to do so. Most of these states are controlled by the same kind of anti-government legislators who run Congress and all of them have been lobbied heavily by the same telecommunication companies that have abandoned rural internet users. But as long as rural Americans keep sending those politicians to Washington, or to the statehouse, rural America is going to remain stuck in the dial-up age.

[Steven Conn is the W. E. Smith Professor of History at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio]

[Commentary] To distract you while they smother network neutrality, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai and acting Federal Trade Commission Chair Maureen Ohlhausen have offered confident assurances that the FTC can step into the role abdicated by the FCC and protect net neutrality with its antitrust and consumer protection enforcement authority. It sounds plausible (plus most people aren’t entirely sure what the FTC does), so you nod along, but don’t fall for it; it’s a ruse. The FTC would be far more limited in how it can protect net neutrality, because:

1) The FTC is prohibited from enforcing its laws against common carriers, like telephone companies
2) The US Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit has broadly interpreted that law to mean that the FTC can’t act against even the non-telephonic services of telephone companies, like broadband
3) Even if the 9th Circuit decision gets reversed, the FTC can’t use antitrust law to protect individual websites and content providers
4) It’s doubtful whether net neutrality could be enforced through the FTC’s other enforcement tool, consumer protection laws

[Anant Raut is the former counsel to the assistant attorney general of the DOJ’s Antitrust Division, as well as a former FTC attorney. He is currently a visiting fellow at Public Knowledge]

[Commentary] The desirability of regulations applicable to broadband internet service should be measured against their impact on investment, competition, and consumer welfare. If the regulations cause more harm than good, it’s time to revise them. This type of analysis is going on now at the Federal Communications Commission as the agency examines the desirability of continuing to apply what is called “Title II regulation” to the internet. Title II regulation, whose name comes from Title II of the Communications Act of 1934, was applied to the Internet two years ago by the agency at the behest of the previous Chairman. But the new Chairman has concluded tentatively that Title II regulation should be eliminated based on the test outlined above, and as a result, the agency is expected to decide soon whether to do so.

Go! Foton agrees with the new FCC chairman that Title II regulation does more harm than good. We therefore welcome the FCC’s action to examine the implications of Title II internet regulation and ultimately roll it back.

[Dr Simin Cai is Chief Executive officer at Go! Foton]

[Commentary] While plenty of media commentators and politicians lauded the efforts of Boston politicians and the Boston Police Department to keep the peace Aug 19 during a extreme-right-wing rally and massive counter protests, they failed at protecting the media’s right to cover a newsworthy event. Reporters were not able to actually cover the program of the event because authorities enforced a barrier of up to 50 yards around the speakers’ platform, preventing reporters from entering. Journalists were blocked from witnessing and reporting on the very reason for the massive crowds. The precautions ostensibly were designed for public safety—to keep those participating in the protest and counter protests apart from one another—but statements from law enforcement suggest the nature of the rally played a role.

At minimum, the city should have provided for a limited number of reporters to access the event, which was held in a public place. Instead, police acted as a sort of private door guard for the protest organizers, blocking access to all but a handful of people supporters vouched for at the gates. A group of about 20 people, including white-nationalist and neo-Nazi speakers, took part in the so-called “Free Speech” rally.

[Sarah Betancourt is a Boston-based reporter who focuses on public policy writing.]

[Commentary] The disturbing implications of abolishing internet privacy rules go far beyond how the internet is used. By selling customer data, larger internet service providers could capture more of the market, albeit unfairly, leaving smaller ISPs in the dust and harming what little competition exists. A decrease in internet access competition will be bad for consumers, as competition is what drives companies to provide the best possible service to consumers at the lowest possible price. T

he bottom line is that private information should be kept private, both for the good of the consumer and for the overall health of the internet ecosystem. With Congress stripping away consumer privacy protections, it’s up to states push back against the repeal of federal policies that protect basic consumer rights. California and other states have already taken the first step toward making that a reality. Now the question remains: Will other states follow?

[Dane Jasper is the CEO and cofounder of Sonic, the largest independent ISP in northern California]

[Commentary] The internet is fundamental to economic opportunity, social action and innovation in the modern age. It has the power to democratize information, it allows us to communicate instantly and effectively, and in recent years, it has facilitated innovation and been the catalyst for social justice movements. That’s why the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) supports a free and open internet.

You may be wondering why the NAACP is weighing in on net neutrality. Throughout our 108 year history, the NAACP has always opposed discrimination and has fought for justice and equal opportunity for all. We see the fight for net neutrality as an extension of that mission. In fact, during our 108th annual convention in Baltimore, our board of directors and members unanimously passed a resolution firmly stating our position on net neutrality.

With the fate of net neutrality on the line, the NAACP urges Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai to respect the congressional intent behind Title II of the Telecommunications Act, to protect the free flow of information and not jeopardize it by removing high-speed broadband from the equalizing framework of Title II. ISPs should not be able to discriminate against any information, or against any groups of people, based on their profit margins or their whims. Information is power and no one should be allowed to strip that power away—and definitely not on our watch.

[Derrick Johnson is interim president and CEO of the NAACP and founder of One Voice Inc.]

[Commentary] Private businesses can and should have the discretion to block web content they find objectionable. That discretion is, however, precisely the opposite position taken by Google and others in the network neutrality debate at the Federal Communications Commission. Under current FCC rules (47 CFR 8.5), “A person engaged in the provision of broadband Internet access service, insofar as such person is so engaged, shall not block lawful content...” If they were broadband Internet access service providers, GoDaddy, Google, and Scaleway would be prohibited by current federal law from blocking access to Daily Stormer. But none of these entities meets the FCC’s technical definition of a “broadband Internet access service provider.” Instead each of these entities has the power and the discretion to block Internet content that it dislikes. That discretion, however, is difficult to exercise.

[Harold Furchtgott-Roth is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute]

[Commentary] I’ve been struck by the similarity between recent calls for suppressing white supremacist speech and past calls for suppressing Communist speech. Of course, there are differences as well — there always are for any analogy — but I thought I’d note some likenesses. Communists, neo-Nazis, neo-Confederates — I can’t stand them. They are supporters of ideologies of slavery and murder. They are losers, who lost for very good reason. But their speech should be protected, I think; and the cases for stripping protection from such speech have always been very similar.

[Eugene Volokh teaches at UCLA School of Law]

Anxiety about the health of competition in the US economy — and elsewhere — is growing. The concern may be well founded but taking forceful action will require economists to provide some practical ways of proving and measuring the harm caused by increasing market power in the digital economy.

The forces driving concentration do not affect the US alone. In all digital markets, the cost structure of high upfront costs and low additional or marginal costs means there are large economies of scale. The broad impact of digital technology has been to increase the scope of the markets many businesses can hope to reach. In pre-digital days, the question an economist would ask is whether the efficiencies gained by big or merging companies would be passed on to consumers in the form of lower prices. Another key question was whether it would still be possible for new entrants to break into the market. Digital platforms make these questions harder to answer.

• One much-needed tool is how to assess consumer benefits.
• A second issue is how to take into account the interactions between markets, given that most platforms and tech companies steadily expand into other activities and markets.
• A third issue, perhaps the most important, is the effect increasing concentration has on incentives to innovate and invest.

[Diane Coyle is professor of economics at the University of Manchester]