Keep Your Mitts Off the Internet

[Commentary] Pick your poison: Do you more object to Big Government or Big Business? After all, neither of those two institutions gives us much reason these days to be particularly comfortable.

And the collision, and need for choice, is staring us in the face when it comes to the Internet where the Federal Communications Commission, the keeper of our electronic media, is squaring off against the mega-companies -- Time-Warner, Comcast, Verizon -- that bring both television and Internet to most American homes. Time-Warner says -- in a lawsuit working its way through the federal courts and likely headed to the US Supreme Court -- that the FCC, which oversees telecommunications policy, does not have jurisdiction over the International Network of Connected Computers that has become our World Wide Web of information. The Internet is private, not public, they insist, and keep your governmental hands off private property. From a First Amendment perspective, this makes a lot of sense, unfortunately. The First Amendment guarantees that the government can't tell private people how they can speak (short of restraining threats to national security, incitements to violence and obscenity). So, the government does not have the right to rule the Internet, unless we somehow decide that all those various connectors and Internet lines can be viewed as public property or in a manner similar to the electric utilities which operate without competition but are tightly regulated. It is an alluring proposition.

I, for one, do not want the FCC meddling with the wildly anarchic and often very democratic discourse that takes place online. On the other hand, I don't trust the Time-Warners; they will act the way corporate behemoths always act. If it is in their political and economic interest, they will find a way to muffle voices that threaten them. If I am picking my poison, I'll go with the government's FCC. Keep it simple. The Internet providers simply cannot regulate content. Everyone will remain in the same lane -- from the White House to General Electric to the little guy whose web site says he hates Time-Warner.

[Robert Miraldi is Professor of journalism, SUNY New Paltz]