Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, made $6 billion last year. Netflix is worth $42 billion dollars and Google has the second largest market capitalization in the world. These are the companies that turned to our government for protection.
You see, net neutrality isn't about speeds, content or equal access to the internet. It is about government control.
Those who sit way atop the 1 percenters spent millions of dollars lobbying the Obama administration to have the Federal Trade Commission declare the internet a public utility. That government takeover allowed the huge internet content providers to spend millions more to have regulators shut out competition and control usage so they could make even more money. YouTube and Netflix can sometimes use up to 70 percent of the available space on the internet, which impedes others, slows down traffic and restricts usage for competitive enterprises. However, letter-to-the-editor writers to The Forum have indicated that if net neutrality were to be rescinded, small business would be blocked out, prices would rise and start-up businesses would be squashed before they even get off the ground. Just the opposite is true if we use government forces to pick and choose who can use the internet.
Since net neutrality was instituted, investment in internet capacity has gone down and prices have gone up. The program was designed to protect the big companies from competition and to force their content through the cables that others built. It hardly seems fair to have businesses spend the capital to build the infrastructure and then have government set prices and decide who can use that infrastructure and who can't.
The hand wringers say the rollback of the government takeover of the internet will harm North Dakota entrepreneurs, start-ups and small technology companies. They don't understand how mega-corporations maneuvered our government into stifling competition and shutting out the very entrepreneurs and innovators who will create the new frontiers of communication services.
ADVERTISEMENT
When the internet was just getting commercialized, President Clinton declared a national policy to preserve a free market internet "unfettered by federal or state regulation." Up until two years ago, that policy generated the very technology companies that are now trying to shut out others so they can have the playing field to themselves. Thankfully, the feds have reversed the misguided regulatory over-reach.
We should take heed from the communication by rural broadband provider Griggs County Telecom:
As fierce defenders of open internet protections for each and every one of our customers, we urge you to support Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai's proposal to free broadband services from the out-of-date 1930s-era regulation imposed on these essential services two years ago. This proposal assures that broadband services will be treated equally and fairly under consistent protections. It also will help advance our number one priority, which is to expand broadband infrastructure and investment and provide cutting edge 21st century communications services to every American.
I am excited to see what an open and free internet will bring into our future.
Schafer served as governor of North Dakota from 1992 to 2000
