Yesterday, TF President Berin Szoka discussed last week’s Net Neutrality ruling on WNPR’s Where We Live. Some worry that the ruling means “Net Neutrality is dead,” and that ISPs will now be free to discriminate against data-intensive websites or services such as Hulu or Netflix. Berin dispelled these fears, and talked about a better approach to that hypothetical problem:
If you want to see how Netflix feels, they put out a statement this morning in a letter to their investors, saying they’re not terribly worried. They think that ISPs aren’t going to discriminate against them because there is broad support for Net neutrality in principle and ISPs don’t want to galvanize government action. … Those of us who’ve been skeptical of the FCC here are not saying that there couldn’t ever hypothetically be a problem, but there hasn’t been thus far and if there were, if you actually saw the scenario most people are afraid of where a cable company discriminates against Netflix because they’re a direct competitor, that’s why we have antitrust laws.
He also went on to talk about how the case was really a victory for the FCC and those who want more government control over the Internet:
The FCC didn’t really lose the case, they just lost two particular rules they tried to put in place. The court made it very clear that they can still do a lot to regulate Net neutrality, and many other things besides.
Listen to the full episode here (Net Neutrality segment begins 11 minutes in), and for more on the ruling, read our op-ed in Wired and check out our other work on Net Neutrality.