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Free Market Versus Free Internet

The debate over "network neutrality" for content on high-speed Internet services creates a bit of a philosophical conflict for conservative bloggers.

As conservatives, they favor free markets, which in the case of Internet content means that network owners should have the freedom to charge more for certain high-bandwidth services. But as bloggers, they favor a "free" Internet -- one that poses no expensive barriers to entry for the average citizen.

The growth of the blogosphere is at least in part the result of how easy and cheap it is to start a blog. Some services, including Google's Blogger.com software that is used by some high-profile bloggers, are indeed free.

So how do they reconcile those two seemingly competing views? It's certainly not a simple task, according to Erick-Woods Erickson. In fact, he and the other directors at RedState have struggled to take a position on network neutrality.

"The RedState directors voted in February to be in favor of net neutrality, but we have not released a public statement," Erickson said. "It was written but held up over technical issues in the editorial -- making sure our statements of fact were accurate. Since then, one of the directors has had a change of heart and would prefer us avoiding the issue. We're still discussing it."

The differences over the issue may well lead to a split vote, he said. "It might have to be a majority-rules situation, but we try very hard to be unanimous in our decisions."

Erickson added, however, that the free-market leanings of conservative bloggers should not make the push for net neutrality a difficult issue. "At the local level, most broadband providers are monopolies," he said. "There are really only one or two choices in most areas. Even free markets believe monopolies should have some regulation."

That explains the decision of Instapundit Glenn Reynolds, a libertarian blogger, to endorse Save The Internet, a coalition pushing for a legislative guarantee of network neutrality.

"Back when I was a communications lawyer in the 1980s," Reynolds wrote in an e-mail, "I worked on something called Open Network Architecture, an FCC initiative intended to ensure that the phone companies (already deregulated but posessed, then as now, of considerable unearned market power) made their connections available to all comers on an equal basis. This seems quite similar to me.

"I'm in favor of free markets, but against a background of pervasive regulation -- which we have here -- it's not always the case that avoiding a particular regulation results in freer markets."

Erickson's concern is that content providers and broadband providers who currently "make sure every packet of data on the Internet is as small as possible and travels as efficiently as possible across the Internet" are not committed to continuing that approach.

"If the broadband providers have their way, there will no longer be an incentive to make the packets of information as small as possible and efficient as possible," he said. "Companies can just pay for priority on the network and pass the cost on to the consumer. The broadband providers will have no incentive to make their networks more efficient, faster and less crowded because they'll be making money off the content providers paying for priority on the network.

"In the end, the consumer loses. We should all be concerned about that."

Posted by Danny | 07:02 AM