Freedom matters. And it matters especially--even in the realm of regulatory frameworks--when huge changes are happening in the content, media, communications and computing spaces, as now is the case.
Consider the ways mobile service providers now are becoming part of the media distribution and content creation businesses, and the emergence of app providers as access providers.
This is more than a mere matter of acquiring new roles in the internet ecosystem.
The reason it matters is that (at least in the United States), policymakers always have used different frameworks for different endeavors and industries. And those distinctions necessarily have real-world business implications.
All that becomes incoherent when the formerly-separate realms fuse. To use the simplest example, if content and media providers become access providers, while access providers become content and media providers, how do we maintain wildly-different regulatory frameworks for contestants who all “do the same things” and operate in the same businesses?
To be sure, our notions of restraining monopolies and protecting consumers do matter. But antitrust law and consumer protection laws can operate successfully there.
The fundamental choice policymakers have is whether to extend freedom or restrict it. In other words, apply utility-style regulations to formerly-free entities, or allow forme utilities who now operate as media and content entities the same freedoms media and app providers have.
Let me be clear: my own position has for decades been that more freedom for all in the ecosystem works best, and is the preferred approach to policy. Those of you who ever have read Technologies of Freedom will understand why.
Responsibility and fairness also are requirements, but something that has to happen at the personal, firm and industry level. Yes, this can be done “to” people, firms and industries, by government fiat. But freedom is the preferred course.
In a world where formerly-distinct endeavors and industries really are converging, we have a choice: extend freedom to former highly-regulated entities who now operate in entirely-new realms where freedom is the policy (First Amendment protections), or remove freedom from content providers and make them “utilities.”
The bigger challenge right now is getting the transition right. Somehow, we need to balance regulatory models, away from “utility” and “common carrier” regulation for app providers, but also away from such regulation for firms that now participate in activities that increasingly are inseparable from traditional First Amendment protected ideas, content and media.
At the same time, major app providers already operate as “access providers,” though without the obligations imposed on only a few access providers.
Some now are arguing essentially for “less freedom” for Facebook, Google, Amazon and others, and “even less freedom” for access providers who--despite becoming content providers at their core--deserve freedom no less than any other content provider.
The better policy is to extend the realm of freedom further, not restrict it. In other words, when harmonization is required, it is better to extend freedom to formerly-distinct industries (broadcast TV and radio, cable TV and other distribution entities, even telcos).
Yes, debates about First Amendment protections are abstract. But they are fundamental and consequential, when our old ways of regulating (freedom for media; some regulation for broadcast; common carrier for telcos) need changing, as the spheres converge.
We can take away freedom, or we can extend it. As argued in Technologies of Freedom, more freedom is the better course.
Some ideas, even if apparently abstract, really do matter. Freedom, responsibility and fairness always come to mind, given my academic training in journalism. It now appears, for a variety of reasons having nothing much to do with those ideas, that freedom is imperiled.
Ironically, it is the leading app providers that now face threats to their freedom, as there are growing calls to “regulate” them in greater ways, globally.
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