From: Forbes | Tech
About two months ago, the FCC proposed a rule that singles out Broadband Internet Access Service (BIAS) providers as the target of new, and seemingly arbitrary limits on their ability to collect and use the data that flow over their networks. The comment period closed this past Friday (view mine here), so as summer begins, it may be a good time to reflect on why the FCC’s proposal is misguided, and how it could be saved. Appealing to the old axiom, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” there’s no reason for the FCC to abandon the FTC’s harm-based approach, which served consumers well since the inception of broadband Internet.
Because the FTC is statutorily barred from enforcing the FTC Act against common carriers, the FCC’s reclassification of broadband Internet access as a common carriage service effectively benched the nation’s primary privacy and data security regulator. Having kicked the FTC off the field, the FCC set out to solve the problem that it had created. But, rather than sticking to the status quo—a harm-based approach that the FTC had applied since the dawn of broadband Internet—it proposed what can best be described as a model of regulatory hubris. The Net Neutrality era began a little over a year ago with assurances that it would not mark a return to heavy-handed 1970s utility style regulation. But this proposal serves as evidence that those assurances were, as many predicted, empty promises.
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