How to gain support for net neutrality
A recent article on savetheinternet.com announced that Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee has joined the net neutrality cause. During a conference call with some bloggers, someone asked Huckabee him for his position on net neutrality. According to the two accounts I’ve read (here and here), Huckabee did not understand what net neutrality was at first. After receiving an “explanation” of net neutrality from the questioner (who happens to be a net neutrality advocate), Huckabee supposedly gave his endorsement.
I have no idea what Huckabee actually said during the conference call, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he really offered his support. I can say this not because I know much about the man or his position on property rights, but because I’ve seen how net neutrality advocates explain their position. They talk about “fairness.” They say that they want a “free and open Internet.” They tell you that broadband companies are about to make your internet connection slower and more expensive. They say that we should “protect” the internet from “discrimination.” They want to save the internet. Those all sound like great things!
But those things are not what net neutrality is about. They won’t explain what they are for, so I will.
Net neutrality is the belief that the government must control how broadband companies handle data transmissions over any privately-owned networks connected to the Internet. The government must do this to ensure that all data is treated the same, regardless of the content or type. Net neutrality holds that it should be illegal for any broadband company to give any data packets priority over any other data packets (i.e. they can’t make content from one website move faster to you than content from another website). All data should be treated the same, or else the government will step in.
In other words, net neutrality is not just a position on computer network administration. It is also a position on whether the government should regulate private computer networks.
I know that talk about computer networks, data, and property rights might be boring, so let me explain it another way. Let’s pretend that someone came up to you to preach about the benefits of vitamin pills. He explains that they will provide your body with all of the vitamins it needs, and that everybody should eat one everyday to stay healthy. You’d probably agree with him. Now let’s pretend that he went one step further and asked you to support a law that would make it a crime for anybody not to eat a vitamin everyday. Would you agree with that? I hope not! Arguing that vitamins are good is one thing, but saying that the government should force everyone to eat them crosses a line. What is that line? Our individual rights.
There is a big difference between saying that someone should do something and that someone must do something. That’s where net neutrality goes wrong. In order to create their ideal internet, they want to use government power to force people to behave how they want.
I wish that net neutrality advocates would openly explain their position, but they know better than that. It is probably easier to get someone to sign an online petition or state that they want “fairness” on the internet (leaving it to the net neutrality advocates to explain what that means later) than it is to convince them that the government should seize control of someone’s private property. And it is your “support” that they after, not your actual agreement with their entire position. They claim to have over a million and a half signatures and the support of their first GOP presidential candidate, so why would they change anything now?
Tags: [government regulation, mike huckabee, net neutrality]