Don't stifle the Internet

[Commentary] The digital revolution has been shaped by blunders as much as by breakthroughs, and the course of its brief history is littered with the bleached skulls of visionary efforts undone by bad timing, bad judgment or the simple human inability to see around corners. So to the tangle of questions known as "net neutrality.'' It may not be, as Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) says, "the most important free-speech issue of our time,'' but the issues are indeed big, defining ones. They involve power, specifically how much power in shaping the online world will be allowed to the companies we pay to access it. Late last month, the Federal Communications Commission, the government's top industry regulator, issued a long-awaited order on "Preserving the Free and Open Internet.'' It should have been a decisive inflection point in the Internet's history. It may instead wind up consigning one of the online world's signature principles to a roadside boneyard. Open access and wide opportunity to the vibrant universe of content creators have defined the Internet's continuing success. But huge power naturally flows to those who control not content, but channels. Restraining that power is essential if the promise of the Internet isn't to be yet another weathered skull.