The market anarchist seeks differing and competing modes of social organization. Market anarchism maintains replacing the state with a decentralized society is desirable because of the feasibility of, and the liberating principles innate to, left-wing free market economics. What better example of voluntary social organization exists than the vast networks emerging on the Internet?

Important here is the concept of information ecology. Information ecology is a system of people, practices, values and technologies in a particular environment (Nardi & O’Day 1999) or community. This idea of information ecology helps us better understand human communication systems and how information moves within them – how is information used, who needs certain types of information, who is impacted by access (or lack there of) of information and what does this mean for our communities? As communication continues its decentralized evolution in the age of the Internet more stakeholders will take active roles in community development, empowering people like never before (Mehra 2009).

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• http://www.youtube.com/user/c4ssvideos
• https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/c4ss-media/id872405202?mt=2
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Bitcoin tips welcome:

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The described collaborative nature of inclined labor in the freed market has far-reaching political and socioeconomic implications for our societies. Historical evidence suggests that social and cultural development are dependent upon active participation from people in their local communities (Kretzmann & McKnight 1993). Emerging communication technologies and the spread (and ease of access to) information can lead to a transfer of authority from centralized institutions to neighborhood or community organizations (McCook 2000). Human communication systems play a fundamental role in the empowerment of all people and provide a wide range of benefits to communities (Wilcox 1996). Altruism is alive and well in the Internet age.

The collaborative nature of the Internet, the ease of access to information, and the development of local to global markets over the net are of particular interest to market anarchists. After all, what better place to work on a project with peers, or organize a rebellion? The Molinari Institute website defines market anarchism this way:

Market anarchism is the doctrine that the legislative, adjudicative, and protective functions unjustly and inefficiently monopolised by the coercive State should be entirely turned over to the voluntary, consensual forces of market society.

The market anarchist seeks differing and competing modes of social organization. Market anarchism maintains replacing the state with a decentralized society is desirable because of the feasibility of, and the liberating principles innate to, left-wing free market economics. What better example of voluntary social organization exists than the vast networks emerging on the Internet?

Important here is the concept of information ecology. Information ecology is a system of people, practices, values and technologies in a particular environment (Nardi & O’Day 1999) or community. This idea of information ecology helps us better understand human communication systems and how information moves within them – how is information used, who needs certain types of information, who is impacted by access (or lack there of) of information and what does this mean for our communities? As communication continues its decentralized evolution in the age of the Internet more stakeholders will take active roles in community development, empowering people like never before (Mehra 2009).

The online encyclopedia “Wikipedia,” for example, explicitly restricts corporations or governments from uploading information to its online content, instead allowing only individuals to add, remove or change content on the website (Kaplan 2010). Driving this collaborative effort is the idea that the labor of many individuals leads to better availability of information than any single person or actor could individually achieve (Fama 1970). The idea is that collaborative projects lead to more efficient markets. Collaborative projects enable the creation of information by interested users and are incredibly democratic.

A political example of this democratization is occurring right now in China. Guobin Yang (2003) notes that civil society and the Internet are dependent upon each other. The Internet facilitates the activities of a civil society by creating new markets for citizen participation. Civil society facilitates further development of the Internet by creating the social capital (citizens and citizen groups) for communication and interaction (Yang 2003). This co-evolution of the Internet and society has big implications for China’s model of government (even as the Chinese government attempts to control access to social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook), as Yang explains:

The co-evolution of the Internet and civil society means that political control of the Internet in China will have to take the form of control of civil society as well, and vice versa. Both options are open to the state, but the simultaneous control of the Internet and civil society will add to the difficulty and complexity of control. The co-evolutionary process also means that civil society development will facilitate the democratic uses of the Internet as much as the diffusion of the Internet will shape civil society. This scenario may have long-term consequences for the development of the Internet and civil society in China.

Many more examples of networked decentralization exist across the net.

Human beings are fond of organizing in groups and with new technology we are in the beginning phases of building a global market defined by collaborative social action. The Internet, information technology and falling communication costs provide easy-access to local/regional/global/stigmergic networks. Communication networks are easily coordinated and create ‘‘virtual public spheres’’ (Langman 2005). Virtual public spheres are places in cyberspace where people and information intersect in virtual communities or subcultures (Langman 2005). Communities that are organized and cultivated on the Internet are just as real as the face-to-face interactions humans use on a daily basis. The Internet provides a space where people can acquire and share information as well as interact, debate and negotiate about issues pertaining to society (Langman 2005) – elevating the speech of all individuals, not just those in a position of power, like never before in human history.

The Internet is incredibly empowering – the feedback loop between the Internet and civil society is an engine driving cultural evolution. The rise of global communication, among all tiers of society, will have huge implications for the future of human civilization.

It is important then, for all libertarian theorists, anarchists, and liberty minded individuals to recognize and challenge threats to the Internet. As empowering as network mutualism can be, technology also tends to centralize power – especially as it is the privileged intelligentsia that mainly moves innovation in this field forward. This gives the elite few the power of dominance over the many. Technology is often born in a system of bureaucratic control that champions a social structure based in top-down hierarchies. This is why the democratic nature of the Internet and our virtual public spheres are so unique – they deserve our protection.

Wherever there is human flourishing, rest assured either a state or corporate bureaucrat (often both) discover a system they argue needs taxation, moderation, regulation and/or prohibition. Take Zach Epstein‘s warning  that a new privacy-killing CISPA clone is now a step closer to becoming law. He writes:

We all remember the outrage that swept the Internet and ultimately played a role in defeating CISPA, a proposed law that would have allowed government agencies and tech companies to exchange private information about United States citizens without their knowledge and without a warrant. Well, it’s time to get ready for another round of outrage because CISPA’s controversial successor is now a step closer to becoming law.

He is referring to the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act of 2014 – approved by the Senate Intelligence Committee in mid-July. The new law (CISA) would allow companies to share private user data with local and federal law enforcement if the claim is made that it relates to any kind of alleged criminal activity. Another piece of legislation allowing the state-corporate apparatus to set-up wiretaps without warrant.

Now take the much more discussed Net-Neutrality debate. The Federal Communications Commission received more than 1 million public comments on the issue of net neutrality during a five-month commenting period for a proposal that would allow cable companies to charge content providers extra fees to deliver faster service. NPR reports it is the biggest public response the FCC has ever gotten on a policy matter in such a short period, and the second most commented-upon FCC issue, period. The overwhelming response from the public was that the internet should remain open in nature to ensure its benefits can be shared by all.

In the same article, however, NPR asks George Washington University law professor Richard Pierce if the record breaking comments will even matter in the long run. Pierce notes that this has been extensively studied by academics and their research shows that rule-making or policymaking tends to be systemically biased to favor the industries that are affected by the regulation. NPR reports:

In a recent example, Pierce points to the work of Kimberly Krawiec. Krawiec read all of the comments that were submitted in the rule-making that led to the Volcker rule — part of the Dodd-Frank Act’s banking reforms. She also reviewed the logs that described the meetings that agency decision makers had with parties who were interested in the outcome of that proceeding. Krawiec found that, while proponents of strict regulation of financial institutions dominated the comment process numerically, their comments were useless to decision makers, because the vast majority of them were identical form letters without data or analysis.

The folks who do comment with the detail, data and analysis that can change minds? Deep-pocketed industries.

The academic conclusion: Research (and history) shows public comments do not affect outcomes – money talks. But, our speech is empowered like never before over the net. The best thing we can do for the Internet is to keep up the trend of decentralization. So far, the national debate has presented us with only two options:

1. We need the state to protect us from losing the internet to corporate control via regulation and legislative decree, or
2. We need the state to protect moneyed interests so corporations can practice their rights in the (state) capitalist market.

We must remember there is a third option – maintain common, mutual control over the net.

By the very nature of information ecology, we can keep the Internet innovative and free. All battles against the state and capital are uphill but we are all empowered by the Internet. As the Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT) notes, as long as we continue to build and provide access to new market opportunities and create safe havens for free speech, the Internet will continue to empower and equalize horizontal social organization as opposed to vertical, top down hierarchies around the globe.

We are winning, simply because we talk and are inclined to labor with one another.

Information technologies are allowing for revolutions in markets, thus effecting business, government and global culture. For the first time in human history there is truly global communication. Though it is still a large privilege to have access to the Internet, more and more people, of many different socio-economic statuses, are crossing the digital divide and beginning to talk. As Tim Malone writes in The Future of Work about the coming revolution:

The new revolution promises to lead to a further transformation in our thinking about control. Where does power come from? Who should wield it? Who is responsible? Once again the result will be in a world where people have more freedom. A world in which power and control are spread more widely than our industrial aged ancestors would have ever thought possible…

Dispersed physically but connected by technology, workers are now able, on a scale never before imaginable, to make their own decisions using information gathered from many other people and places.

As Malone points out, emerging orders in society will continue the trend of decentralization. If left in common control the net will continually become democratic, highly organized, structured and efficient – it will be anarchic progress.

There has been a constant push throughout human history to decentralize when the time is optimal. The emergence of democracy, for example, shows off this trait. Now, in an era of low communication costs and emerging technologies, we may see enhanced social evolution, a stronger push to decentralize and the emergence of small social networks that can cause big changes in how we live our everyday lives. Information technology is beginning to impact our neighborhoods, cities, work places and governance. We are connected and, with each blog, tweet, event, post or review, prove we are not neutral, but instead are revolutionaries for network mutualism.

Works Cited:

Fama, E. F. (1970) Efficient Capital Markets: A Review of Theory and Empirical Work. Journal of Finance, vol. 25 no. 2, 383—417.

Kaplan, Andres and Michael Hanlein. (2010) Users of the World Unite! The Challenges and Opportunities of  Social Media. Business Horizons.

Kretzmann, J. P. & L. McKnight. (1993) Building Communities From the Inside Out: A Path Toward Finding and Mobilizing a Communities Assests. Institute for Policy Research.

Langman, Lauren. (2005)From Virtual Public Spheres to Global Justice: A Critical Theory of Internetworked Social Movements. American Sociological Association.

Malone, Thomas W. (2004) The Future of Work. Harvard Business School Press

McCook, K. (2007) A Place at the Table: Participating in Community Building. ALA Editions.

Mehta, Bharat & Ann Peterson Bishop. (2004) The Internet for Empowerment of Minority and Margenalized Users. New Media and Society Vol6 (6):781–802

Mehra, Bharat and Ramesh Srinivasan. (2007) The Library-Community Convergence Framework for Community Action: Libraries as Catalysts of Social Change. Libri, vol. 57,  123–139.

Nardi, B & V. O’Day. (1996) Information Ecologies: Using Information with Heart. MIT Press.

Wilcox D. (1996) Inventing the Future – Communities in the Information Society. NCVO.

Yang, Guobin. (2003) The Co-Evolution of the Internet and Civil Society in China. University of California Press, vol. XLIII, no. 3.

Plus, Orwell probably hadn’t heard of Wikipedia. This week, ten of the biggest public relations firms signed a pledge that condemned the practice of “sockpuppeting,” or padding clients’ Wikipedia pages to their benefit. This opened up a whole new avenue to question the legitimacy of the public relations industry, one that’s already scoffed at heartily. It’s easy to picture a public relations professional as a conscienceless brownnoser, but I find it hard to believe that they are any more susceptible to corruption of information than journalists who often answer to media corporations or state-owned outlets. If you promote your friend’s band or their blog post on Facebook, you’re doing public relations. It’s not inherently evil and it’s not all that glamorous.

Anyway, here’s part of the pledge:

“On behalf of our firms, we recognize Wikipedia’s unique and important role as a public knowledge resource. We also acknowledge that the prior actions of some in our industry have led to a challenging relationship with the community of Wikipedia editors.”

Wikipedia already has a shaky reputation as a source of information because of the fact that anyone can go in and say whatever they want on a page. Your high school teachers and college professors probably weren’t too happy with you if you ever cited Wikipedia in a research paper. While the accuracy of Wikipedia is improving, anything positive or negative on a business’s Wiki page should probably be taken with a grain of salt. That said, a lot of people do use Wikipedia as a key source of information, and if your business has its own page, most people would take that as a signal that you’ve gained recognition.

In October 2013, the Wikipedia admins went on a wild goose chase after “suspicious” accounts, targeting an organization called Wiki-PR:

“Former Wiki-PR clients told the Daily Dot that they paid between $500 and $1,000 to the company for creation of a Wikipedia page, and $50 a month for monitoring any changes made to the page and resurrection of any material deleted during subsequent edits.

In other words, we’ll create the page you want and do everything we can to make sure it stays that way. It should go without saying that this practice seriously undermines the credibility of both the organization and the very forum it’s promoting. In an email, Wiki-PR’s CEO defended his company’s practices, writing that they simply “counsel our clients on how to adhere to Wikipedia’s rules” and that their services differ from those of most PR firms which “don’t know the rules as well because they do PR work, broadly, and try to promote.”

So what, though? If you’re operating under the assumption that everyone in public relations is a lying hack and that Wikipedia is a beacon of infallible knowledge, you’re wrong on both counts. Wikipedia is really trying to throw their ethical weight at these people – not unlike journalists who think they hold a sort of ethical superiority over PR folks – who are going to end up compromising their clients in the long run if their Wiki posts are inaccurate, anyway.

Here are the experts’ opinions on this. Most of them talk about open, honest and mutually beneficial communication, but this statement from Erik Deutsch, principal at ExcelPR  group and president of PRSA-LA caught my interest:

“It’s hard to argue with the principles adopted by the 10 large PR firms. That said, issuing such a statement could actually support the notion that PR pros somehow deserve to be singled out for their unique ability to wreak havoc on platforms like Wikipedia. Taken a step further, it could reinforce the view among critics that it’s inherently ‘dubious’ to get paid to write or edit a client’s Wikipedia page.”

This pretty much sums up the unfair assumption that people who want positive outcomes for their businesses should be shamed for promoting them online. Believing everything you read on the Internet is a dangerous game to begin with, and public relations firms’ bickering with Wikipedia over conflicts of interest in businesses detracts from what they should be worried about – enemies of net neutrality making life difficult for new businesses to flourish online to begin with.

Orwell would probably be most upset about the ethical policing on both ends.

Despite its aspirations and mythological treatment, the internet has never been some perfectly connected “net” capable of regenerating like Wolverine. While that goal was an underlying assumption of a variety of protocols that became popular and helped shape the development of the internet, the internet in practice is not an organic mesh of individuals, but a few thousand organizations that are loosely tied together in clusters. In theory each organization controls the connections that comprise its internal network and, again in theory, they build physical links and negotiate contracts with one another to pass packets between networks. This peering takes many forms, passing traffic at different speeds and costs, but the traffic itself has largely been treated homogeneously.

Well, okay, this isn’t entirely true. Governments around the world have installed routers and machines capable of Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) wherein a packet is routed based on its content. This is one way the People’s Republic of China, for example, has blocked connections to the Tor network.

But there are good reasons for an organization to peek inside packets and adjust their prioritization accordingly. DDOS attacks or merely bandwidth intensive but not pressing traffic can flood the network slowing down transmission rates for other content. The problem isn’t a lack of neutrality; neutrality is usually artificial, only possible where there are universally shared preferences or no pressure to optimize.

If the internet survives the next twenty years it will undoubtedly look quite different. Radicals working on overlay networks to the existing infrastructure, like Tor, I2P, GnuNet, Tahoe-LAFS, and FreeNet, are fighting the more immediate battle, but so long as only a few hundred or thousand organizations control the material connections that everything travels on we will always be in danger of the state. Even a hundred thousand networks could still be beaten into collaboration with a censorship regime. Right now the future sits on a knife edge, poised to fall into new enclosures, with state access cards and comprehensive whitelisting. And even if we win, the day still might come where the state wakes up and considers technological society itself too high a risk, sabotaging and tearing apart our centralized infrastructure.

To head off such retreats, to keep the statists on the playing field, we must build a world of proactive, individual-scale connections. In the more trivial ad hoc limit this can look like peer-to-peer connections between the phones of passing strangers, but when it comes to building lasting resilient bonds there’s no replacing on the ground community organizing. The sort of projects anarchists have long taken the lead in, building one-on-one relationships of trust and strengthening the human roots upon which all other relations are built.

There are many community mesh wifi projects with radical sensibilities, some like those of Athens, Catalonia and across Germany are already quite established and supported. Hundreds of others are still just attempted sprouts. Focusing on those in the midrange we’ve chosen to invest over six hundred dollars in People’s Open Network in Oakland, California, Kansas City Freedom Network, and AlterMundi in Argentina to provide an extra push as well as highlight their radical sensibilities and work at building community.

We at the Center for a Stateless Society believe strongly in the potency and importance of persuasion in building a freed world, but we also know that world won’t be built without hands-on grappling, activist organizing and building commons. That’s why we started the Entrepreneurial Anti-capitalism project, to pay forward the good fortune we’ve received and provide a helping hand to those doing amazing, necessary, frequently thankless work with very little.

It is our hope that others will follow our lead in donating to these great projects. Each one accepts bitcoin at the following addresses:

• People’s Open Network: 12RxU4DpLpdWcmEBn7Tj325CCXBwt5i9Hc
• AlterMundi: 12mVSq3NBKTs3tCpWXyJqwdHq8p92ka6fq
• KC Freedom: 1Jmjmf2hDWsrSfnxiM27GZtNWmWGbPNEQM

Ho pensato che magari stavo sbagliando, visto che, dopotutto, stavo cercando in internet stesso. Forse il mio fornitore blocca la ricerca, e quando digito “censura da parte dei fornitori di accesso ad internet” su Google è lo stesso fornitore di accesso che filtra i risultati. Forse stavo vivendo in una sorta di Matrix di internet, in cui tutto quello che vedo è quello che il potere vuole farmi vedere e io non me ne accorgo mai.

Però ho trovato diversi utenti che criticavano i servizi offerti dalla loro compagnia, che è quella di cui mi servo io. A quanto pare, il mio fornitore ha fallito miseramente nel suo tentativo di censurare i suoi utenti. Sono riuscito anche ad accedere ai siti della concorrenza e fare una valutazione dei loro prezzi; che, sorprendentemente, in alcuni casi risultavano più bassi di quello che pago io.

Non è possibile. Ho provato con altri siti che avrebbero potuto dare fastidio al mio fornitore. Siti che notoriamente sostengono posizioni politiche radicali e non ortodosse, ad esempio. Con C4SS non ho avuto problemi di accesso. La barra dei segnalibri del mio browser, dove sono diversi siti libertari e anarchici, è uscita incolume.

Posso guardare e scaricare video, così come ascoltare e scaricare musica. I siti torrent sono più vivi che mai per quanto mi riguarda; e non si può dire che siano ben accettati dai fornitori di accesso. Eppure sono a distanza di un click. Non importa quanti siti visito e quanto traffico genero, pago sempre la stessa cifra, ogni mese, per accedere ad internet. Chi l’avrebbe mai detto?

Non potevo crederci. Mi avevano detto che internet per me era quasi completamente chiuso. Senza le norme sulla neutralità della rete, i fornitori di accesso fanno pagare di più per accedere e secondo il piano sottoscritto non mi fanno accedere a certi siti web: una censura.

Questo è quello che ha detto il deputato federale (brasiliano, ndt) Alessandro Molon. Dice che, se non ci fosse la cosiddetta Pietra Miliare Civile di Internet, una nuova legge approvata dalla camera che impone la neutralità della rete, “chi oggi accede gratis a YouTube dovrà pagare di più per vedere i video, e chi scarica musica dovrà pagare di più per farlo.”

Per un attimo ho sperato che il mio fornitore mi facesse pagare di più per accedere a YouTube, così non posso entrarci e sentire le bugie ridicole e nauseanti di Molon.

Lo stato dice che vuole garantire la libertà su internet. È vero?

Lo stato brasiliano è secondo quanto a richieste di eliminazione di contenuti da Google. Fino a qualche tempo fa guidava la classifica. Di recente, la Corte Superiore di Giustizia ha stabilito che qualunque “contenuto offensivo” deve essere rimosso da YouTube.

Dunque l’onere di dimostrare che la neutralità della rete proposta dal governo allargherà la nostra libertà, invece del contrario, spetta tutto ai suoi sostenitori.

Non c’è neanche bisogno di difendere l’internet senza regole dalle dichiarazioni allucinanti di Alessandro Molon e Jean Wyllys, secondo i quali i fornitori di accesso – e non lo stato – stanno per privarci della nostra libertà. Perché è esattamente il contrario.

Traduzione di Enrico Sanna.

La neutralità della rete attrae. Dopotutto, se lasciamo che le compagnie offrano qualunque piano che loro giudicano adatto, l’impressione è che gli utenti dovranno pagare di più per avere un accesso illimitato, o che le compagnie bloccheranno il contenuto giudicato concorrenziale. Dunque, questo è il ragionamento, occorre trattare tutto il contenuto di internet alla stessa maniera.

Ma questa difesa della neutralità di internet serve solo a distrarre dal vero problema.

Nel mercato libero, la neutralità si ottiene con processo di competizione, non rifiutando la richiesta di “non-neutralità”, dove, ad esempio, le persone possono optare per un piano tariffario che dà accesso solo alle email, i social media e qualche altro sito specifico ad un prezzo basso, mentre le grosse società che usano montagne di dati e ingolfano le infrastrutture potrebbero pagare di più. In questo modo, i clienti di fascia bassa non sarebbero costretti a pagare per chi fa un uso massiccio della rete.

Nel mercato, la “neutralità” si ottiene tramite la libertà di scelta: se un fornitore non offre un accesso neutrale ad un prezzo ragionevole, si può sempre migrare altrove. Questo incentiva la concorrenza e sprona ad innovare, dando come risultato un menu di offerte e opzioni più ampio, oltre a fornire una soluzione al problema della congestione dei dati e altro.

Il disegno di legge arriva a riconoscere che la neutralità di rete non è senza costi. Secondo voi chi avrà il potere di determinare quando la neutralità non vale il suo prezzo?

§ 1º La discriminazione o il deterioramento del traffico di internet saranno regolati dal Presidente della Repubblica con i suoi poteri personali… sentito il consiglio del Comitato per la Gestione di Internet e l’Agenzia per le Telecomunicazioni Nazionali, e deve essere fatto seguendo:

I – i requisiti tecnici essenziali per la fornitura e l’applicazione dei servizi; e

II – dando la priorità ai servizi di emergenza.

Dunque sarà soltanto lo stato (specificamente il presidente) ad avere il potere di determinare quando applicare la neutralità. La teoria della scelta pubblica dimostra che lo stato non è neutro e che una democrazia rappresentativa non opera per il bene della maggioranza ma per le minoranze organizzate, compresa la grande impresa che gode di appoggi politici, e che può pagare la burocrazia per regolare il rapporto tra neutralità e non-neutralità secondo il proprio bisogno.

Dunque, la Pietra Miliare Civile di Internet non affronta il vero problema: gli ostacoli alla libertà d’ingresso nell’industria, e l’assenza di incentivi alla sperimentazione e l’innovazione, a causa della legislazione o della burocrazia.

Questi ostacoli frenano la capacità del mercato di determinare la proporzione ideale tra neutralità e non-neutralità che meglio soddisfa la domanda di servizi internet in un dato momento attraverso la libera interazione tra utenti, che sono gli unici che sanno veramente cosa è meglio per se stessi. Uno dei vantaggi di questa libera contrattazione sul mercato è che non impone costi sulla società in generale, mentre lo stesso non può dirsi della nuova legge.

La Pietra Miliare Civile servirà solo ad ingigantire i problemi del mercato già esistenti in Brasile, perché darà al governo il potere di determinare il significato della neutralità. Se è vero che le grandi imprese controllano Brasilia, dare più potere allo stato significa cedere questo potere a queste imprese.

Traduzione di Enrico Sanna.

I thought I might have been doing something wrong, for, after all, I was searching the internet itself. Perhaps my ISP was blocking my searches all along, and when I typed “censorship by Internet Service Providers” on Google, the provider itself could have been filtering my results. It is possible that I was living in an Internet Matrix, in which everything that I see is what the powers that be want me to see, I may never be able to notice.

However, I managed to find several users criticizing the services provided by the company I contract from. Apparently, my ISP is failing miserably in its attempt to censor its users. I was also able to access competitors’ websites and estimate their prices – which, astonishingly, turned out to be better than what I’m currently paying for Internet in some instances.

It can’t be. I tried to enter more websites that could generate some discomfort to my provider. Websites which are known to advocate radical and unorthodox political positions, for example. I had no problems getting to C4SS website. The bookmarks bar on my browser, featuring several libertarian and anarchist websites, remains unscathed.

I am able to watch and download videos, as well as listen to and download music. Torrent websites are as live as ever for me; we can’t even say they are a welcome feature of the Internet for providers. Yet they are still a click away. No matter how many websites I access and how much data I transfer, I still pay the same price each month for Internet. Who would’ve thought?

I could not believe it, because I’ve been told that the Internet was supposed to be almost entirely closed off to me. Without net neutrality regulation, ISPs can charge more money for access and censor websites according to the data plan I happen to subscribe to.

That is what federal deputy Alessandro Molon (PT-RJ) has claimed. According to him, without the so called Civil Landmark of the Internet, a new piece of legislation that enforces net neutrality and has just been approved by the Chamber of Deputies, “people who access Youtube for free today will have to pay more money to watch videos, people who download music will have to pay more money to do it.”

For a minute I really hoped my provider would charge more money for Youtube, so that I wouldn’t be able to access it and listen to Molon’s ridiculous, nauseating lies.

The government claims to be willing to guarantee freedom on the Internet. Well, is that true?

The Brazilian state is in second place when it comes to requests to take content down from Google. Not long ago, it was the leader. Recently, the Superior Court of Justice has ruled that any “offensive content” should be taken down from Youtube.

So, the burden of proving that government net neutrality is going to enhance our freedom, rather than hamper it, is on its advocates.

There is no need of defending unregulated Internet from Alessandro Molon’s and Jean Wyllys‘s hallucinating claims that ISPs – and not the government – are about to take away our liberty. It’s clearly the opposite.

Translations for this article:

• Italian, Neutralità della Rete e Bugie.

Net neutrality is alluring. After all, if we allow companies to offer whatever plans they seem fit, it seems that people will have to pay more for unlimited access or that companies would block content they deem as competition. Thus, the reasoning goes, it should be necessary to treat all Internet content equalliy.

However, this defense of net neutrality is just a distraction from the real problem.

In a free market, neutrality is obtained by the very competition process, not by dismissing the demand for “non-neutrality,” where, for example, people could opt for a plan that only granted access to email, social media and some specific websites paying a lower price, whereas large companies that use a lot of data and hog the infrastructure could pay more. That way, customers of lower tier plans wouldn’t be forced to subsidize heavy data use.

In the market, “neutrality” is achieved by freedom of choice: If a provider does not offer neutral access for a reasonable price, it is possible to migrate to another. This creates incentives for competitors to jump in and innovate, resulting in a more attractive menu of Internet plans and options, as well as providing solutions for problems with data congestion and so on.

The draft bill even recognizes that net neutrality can’t be maintained at any cost. Guess who will have the power to determine when neutrality is not worth its price?

§ 1st The discrimination or degradation of Internet traffic will be regulated according to private attributions of the President of the Republic . . . counseled by the Internet Management Committee and the National Telecommunications Agency, and should be done according to:

I – technical requirements essential for adequate providing of services and applications; and

II – priorities to emergency services.

So, it is none other than the state (specifically the president) who will have the power to determine when neutrality should not be followed. Public choice teaches us that the state itself is not neutral and that representative democracy works not for the good of the majority, but rather for well-organized minorities, including large and politically connected corporations, which can throw money at the bureaucrats to adjust the neutrality and non-neutrality proportions they’re interested in.

Hence, the Civil Landmark of the Internet did not debate the real issue: Obstacles to the free entry in the industry and lack of incentives to experimentation and innovations, due to legislation or red tape.

These obstacles hinder market’s ability to determine the ideal proportion of neutrality and non-neutrality that best satisfies the demand for Internet services at a given time through the free interactions with users, who are the ones who actually know what is best for themselves. This free haggling in the market also has the upside of not imposing costs on society at large — the same cannot be said about the new legislation.

The Civil Landmark will only deepen the problems of the market that already exists in Brazil, because it will give the government the power to determine what neutrality actually means. If corporations control Brasília, giving more power to the government is the same as handing the reins over to the corporations.

Translations for this article:

• Italian, La Neutralità della Rete È una Distrazione, non il Vero Problema.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled that the FCC lacks authority to require broadband providers to give equal treatment to all Internet traffic flowing over their networks. That was a big victory for Comcast Corp., the nation’s largest cable company, which had challenged the FCC’s authority to impose such ‘network neutrality’ obligations on broadband providers.

Supporters of network neutrality, including the FCC chairman, have argued that the policy is necessary to prevent broadband providers from favoring or discriminating against certain Web sites and online services, such as Internet phone programs or software that runs in a Web browser. Advocates contend there is precedent: Nondiscrimination rules have traditionally applied to so-called ‘common carrier’ networks that serve the public, from roads and highways to electrical grids and telephone lines.

But broadband providers such as Comcast, AT&T Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc. argue that after spending billions of dollars on their networks, they should be able to sell premium services and manage their systems to prevent certain applications from hogging capacity.

Damned straight. The networks rightfully belong to these companies, and not the government. And guess what? In a free market, if one company does decide to impose the kind of restrictions aforementioned, a competitor will provide Internet service that does not, and at a reasonable price based on unfettered market values. Indeed, prices would further plummet in an absence of ever-inflating government sanctioned fiat currency, taxation, other regulations and red tape that artificially inflate costs, and all of the other arrogant and wasteful measures imposed on nearly all businesses at gunpoint via the oppression of government. Does anyone really need a government court ruling to establish that?

And does anyone really think that the government’s motivation for using the FCC in this instance as its enforcement arm against Internet service providers (ISPs) is pure and noble; that their only desire is to improve the lot of consumers? Let’s have a little bit of a further look at that AP article:

Tuesday’s unanimous ruling by the three-judge panel was a setback for the FCC because it questioned the agency’s authority to regulate broadband. That could cause problems beyond the FCC’s effort to adopt official net neutrality regulations. It also has serious implications for the ambitious national broadband-expansion plan released by the FCC last month. The FCC needs the authority to regulate broadband so that it can push ahead with some of the plan’s key recommendations. Among other things, the FCC proposes to expand broadband by tapping the federal fund that subsidizes telephone service in poor and rural communities.

Oh, do say! Looks like another Obama welfare scheme at public expense that the Lefties didn’t want to see go down the tubes. But notice also how – in this case the FCC – government once again “needs the authority to regulate” in the name of saving the world from a bunch of greedy capitalist pigs. After all, it’s the “big corporations” who wish to exploit us all with heavy-handed tactics, and ultimately censor and shut down free speech on the Internet. Personally, a company that seeks my business on a voluntary basis by vying with competitors in providing the best service at the lowest realistic price will always trump an institution that seeks to limit choice and commandeer monopolism literally at gunpoint – so that it can impose censorship, or shut down the entire network, or do whatever it wishes with total unaccountability while financing it all with extorted loot.

It comes down to a simple principle; the very principle free market anarchism is based on: Either you believe that the foundation of all human relationships is and should be violence, or you don’t. The choice is yours (this one, anyway). You decide.

Translations for this article:

• Portuguese, Neutralidade da internet? O governo nunca é neutro.