The Neutrality Network

[Commentary] As I watch great work [of net neutrality rules] get wiped away by a Federal Communications Commission chairman focused exclusively on making an industry happy, I can’t escape the recognition that led me to move on from this field just over a decade ago. For as I read the frantic activism on Reddit and Twitter, I just want to grab these great souls by the shoulders and ask them, “Why would you ever expect network neutrality to survive within a government that has so completely given up on democratic neutrality?” Because there is a deep but obvious link between the internet we want and the democracy we should have.

What our democracy does, it should do with representatives who are, analogously, independent. Not independent of us, the citizens, but of the equivalent to network intermediaries, the concentrated funders of political campaigns. Representatives must be free to aim for the policy that reflects the demands of the people, as efficiently and effectively as they can, independent of the interests of any powerful, and entrenching, intermediaries. Democracy needs independence — not from the people, but from the current Congress-owners—just as the internet needs independence from the potentially corrupting influence of its intermediaries: the network owners.

[Lawrence Lessig is the Roy L. Furman Professor of Law at Harvard Law School]