Dept. of You Can’t Make This Stuff Up:
Three of the driving forces behind the 10-year effort to regulate the Internet — Netflix, Mozilla, and Google — have, in the last few days and in their own ways, all recanted their zealous support of Net Neutrality. It may have been helpful to have this information . . . before last week, when the FCC plunged the entire Internet industry into a years-long legal war.
First, on Monday, Netflix announced it had entered into a “sponsored data” deal with an Australian ISP, which violates the principles of “strong Net Neutrality,” Netflix’s preferred and especially robust flavor of regulation.
Then on Wednesday, Netflix CFO David Wells, speaking at an investor conference, said
“Were we pleased it pushed to Title II? Probably not,” Wells said at the conference. “We were hoping there might be a non-regulated solution.”
At this week’s huge Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, meanwhile, my AEI colleague Jeff Eisenach reported via Twitter that a Mozilla executive had backtracked:
| JeffEisenach Mozilla’s Dixon-Thayer is latest #netneutrality advocate to backpedal – “we don’t necessarily favor regulation” #repealtitleII #MWC15MP 3/4/15, 10:44 AM |
Add these to the revelations about Google’s newfound reticence. Several weeks ago, in The Wall Street Journal‘s blockbuster exposé, we found out that Google Chairman Eric Schmidt called the White House to protest President Obama’s surprise endorsement of Title II regulation of the Internet. Then, just days before the February 26 vote at the FCC, Google urgently pleaded that the Commission remove the bizarre new regulatory provision known as broadband subscriber access service (BSAS), which would have created out of thin air a hereto unknown “service” between websites and ISP consumers — in order to regulate that previously nonexistent service. (Ironic, yes, that this BSAS provision was dreamt up by . . . Mozilla.) Google was successful, just 48 hours before the vote, in excising this menacing regulation of a phantom service. But Google and the others are waking up to the fact that Title II and broad Section 706 authority might contain more than a few nasty surprises.
Fred Campbell examined Netflix’s statements over the last year and concluded: “Netflix bluffed. And everybody lost.”
And Yet . . .
The bottom line of these infuriating reversals may actually be a positive for the Internet. These epiphanies — “Holy bit, we just gave the FCC the power do do what!?!” — may wake serious people from the superficial slumber of substance-free advocacy. The epiphanies may give new life to efforts in Congress to find a legislative compromise that would prohibit clear bad behavior (blocking, throttling, etc.) but which would also circumscribe the FCC’s regulatory ambitions and thus allow the Internet to continue on its mostly free and unregulated — and hugely successful — path.
