As the FCC wades into the net neutrality fight, the debate is hotter than ever. A good sample of the back and forth is below, as the Heartland Institute’s James G. Lakely responds to the Chicago Sun-Times’ Nov. 3 editorial titled “Greed shouldn’t slow Internet innovation.”

The real Net neutrality debate

Your Nov. 3 editorial, “Greed shouldn’t slow Internet innovation,” is clever, but you do your readers a disservice by absurdly framing net neutrality as a case of greedy corporations exploiting defenseless Internet consumers.

The debate over net neutrality hinges on a simple question: Should individuals making choices in a free market determine Internet policy, or shall bureaucrats micromanage such a complex technical and economic system through ad hoc decisions in Washington?

Your argument for the latter would be on more solid footing if you did not have to set up hypothetical scenarios of Internet service providers harming consumers. Any provider “looking for a way to make another buck” (cue the scary music) would find fewer bucks to be made if it decided to degrade or restrict access to Jon Stewart in favor of “Ugly Betty.” The market will punish such noxious business practices without what Sen. John McCain rightly calls a “government takeover of the Internet.”

James G. Lakely

Tags: FCC, Heartland Institute, Net Neutrality

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 11th, 2009 at 1:36 pm and is filed under Government, Internet. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.