The Senate voted unanimously this week to recommend that the President oppose any regulation by the International Telecommunications Union of the Internet. The resolution states that the government should "promote a global Internet free from government control." In his statement explaining the vote, Senator Marco Rubio noted that "I just want to be clear that America is on record as being in favor of Internet freedom and that we don't want to see any internationally recognized right for government interference on the Internet and the free flow of information on the Internet."
Senator Rubio authored an opinion piece in advance of the vote in Politico, discussing how important "Internet freedom" is:
"A top-down, international regulatory model goes against the very nature of the Internet. An international regulatory regime, and the politics and red tape that go with it, directly conflict with the Internet’s purpose of sharing ideas and connecting people. Governments and international bodies cannot keep pace with the Internet, and they should not try to do so." (emphasis mine)
There is a lot of room for debate about what "Internet freedom" means, and how we should react to that politically. Senator Rubio knows that as well as anyone: He co-sponsored PIPA.
Yep. That happened.
For anyone who only discovered the Internet within the last six months, PIPA, or the PROTECT IP Act, was a proposed bill last year to give the government significant power to leverage the Internet against intellectual property violations. Basically, it would have given the government the ability to cut off, block, or shut down sites that support other sites violating copyright.
To be fair to Senator Rubio, he rescinded his support for the bill after public outcry. But even in withdrawing his support for the bill, he stated that "we should take more time to address the concerns raised by all sides, and come up with new legislation that addresses Internet piracy while protecting free and open access to the Internet." (emphasis mine)
PIPA had 38 co-sponsors at one point. This is the part where I reiterate that the "Open Internet Resolution" passed unanimously. That means that 38 Senators oppose Internet regulation ... except when the U.S. government is the regulator.
This makes sense, if you are a U.S. regulator. The U.S. is dominant on the international market in intellectual property. Many of the biggest creators of multimedia content (television shows, movies), as well as many of the major edge providers of Internet services (Google, Amazon, eBay, PayPal) are all U.S. companies. The U.S. has the most to gain from dictating the rules of the Internet.
But nobody really thinks that other countries will sit by and watch while we dictate the terms of the Internet most favorable to us, do they? The U.S. is an IP juggernaut, and aggressive IP rules favor us at the expense of other nations. U.S. businesses leverage the Internet for content and edge services. If the U.S. government starts leveraging the Internet further to give them an advantage, other nations will respond in kind and try to protect their own advantages.
We can have a serious, important discussion about how the Internet should be approached and handled by national and international bodies. But we're not having that discussion. Instead, we're having a false one -- pretending that the decision we're making is between an "open" Internet and a "regulated" one. Instead, an "open" Internet apparently means one regulated only in ways that leverage U.S. industries.
This is just an example of how insincere our conversation about the Internet is. We need to have an honest conversation not only domestically but internationally as well. I don't know whether and what kind of legislation is the right thing for the Internet. But I do know that lying to ourselves -- and to the rest of the world -- isn't the answer. Thirty-eight Senators need to realize that.
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