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Internet and Technology

The Information Revolution, made possible by the rapid advances in communications technologies, is the source of many of the most positive advances in business, lifestyle, and quality of life.  Digital networks have existed, to this point, as an unregulated free market where ideas and products compete for the attention, acceptance, and resources of a free audience.  

The internet has been a proving ground for the unregulated free market.  Sites like Wikipedia revolutionized the way we collect information.  Ebay and Amazon did the same for buyers and sellers.  At the same time, competing service providers have boosted connections speed and access, while lowering the price.  The internet has changed the way we do business offline as well.  The fields of medicine, entertainment, and countless others have benefitted because of unencumbered innovation.

These dramatically positive changes could not have happened in a tightly regulated space.  The falsely named net neutrality regulation stifles free speech and removes the incentives for service providers to innovate. 

Other Popular Issues

The government should keep its hands off the internet.  Internet content (and the manner in which it is delivered) is none of the government's business.  

Congressman Ron Paul, (R-TX)

 

The telecommunications sector is dynamic.  Markets and technologies continue to evolve rapidly, but communications policy has not kept pace.  The policymaking landscape is encumbered, not just with complicated rules and regulations, but with the same outdated thinking that produced those policies in the first place.  The traditional premises for regulation -- a lack of competition and a perceived need to ensure universal service -- are vanishing, if not already gone.

Cato Handbook for Policymakers

 

The most-discussed regulatory proposal of recent years -- and the proposal that would cause the most long-run harm -- is neetwork neutrality regulation.  At the moment, Internet service providers operate largely free of the burdensome regulations that afflict the telephone and cable television industries.  Network neutrality regulations would open the way for government regulation of the Internet, a danger that greatly outweighs the harm network neutrality regulations are designed to forestall.  

Cato Handbook for Policymakers

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