BrianGarst.com

My most recent column for EveryJoe explains why the most recent proposals in the name of “net neutrality” are a bad idea.

Most agree that it would be bad for the internet if the service providers (ISPs) that connect users to the internet arbitrarily blocked or throttled access to certain sites. The internet has thrived as a bastion of freedom, and no one who appreciates the vast economic and social benefits derived from its emergence wants that to change. Yet due to their misunderstanding of both the architecture of the internet and the government’s interest in it, it is those who claim most loudly to want to save the internet that have put it in jeopardy.

By seeking to make the government arbiter of the net, agitators for regulation to enforce net neutrality would put responsibility for the net’s protection in the hands of those least capable of dealing with its complex and continuously evolving nature. To make matters worse, they would do so to fight off a largely imagined problem…

Read the rest here. I should add, because I may not have done a good enough job of this in the piece, that specific legislative proposals are not the same thing as ideas. You can get the warm and fuzzies over net neutrality (though as I argue in the piece there’s a lot of misunderstanding over even existing internet rules), and still not believe that government regulation is the way to go.

I also want to direct anyone looking for more info to TechFreedom.