Rasmussen’s Polling Disinformation
Honest polling may or may not be interesting. Interesting polling may or may not be honest. Rasmussen pulled off the latter in a poll containing disinformation in the questions, and trumpeted baseless findings.
A recent Rasmussen Reportclaims that “only 21% of the respondents want the FCC to regulate the Internet.” Utter hogwash. It’s polling was disingenuous, at best. The key question has no factual basis, and is completely unrelated to the network neutrality question it purports to illuminate.
Let’s break it down.
First question: “How closely have you followed stories about Internet neutrality issues?”
Second question: “Should the Federal Communications Commission regulate the Internet like it does radio and television?”
The core problem is that the second question is a red herring having nothing to do with the first. Neither the FCC nor Congress is suggesting that the FCC “regulate the Internet like it does radio and television” in relation to the net neutrality debate. The way the FCC regulates radio and television is completely unrelated to Internet neutrality, and there is absolutely no basis for the FCC to regulate the Internet that way. Even if the respondents were unanimous in favor or against, the responses would not inform the debate one whit. Rasmussen’s poll is the intellectual equivalent of asking, (1) Have you been following stories about drunk drivers? (2) Do you think the National Highway Safety Administration should regulate drunk driving the way it regulates automobile safety? It is dishonest to suggest that there is any connection between how the FCC regulates radio and television and the question of Internet neutrality.
The FCC regulates radio and television in two primary ways. First, the FCC regulates radio and television by licensing broadcasters, regulating who can broadcast using which part of the airwaves so that the signal of one broadcaster does not interfere with that of another. But no one has to be licensed to communicate over the Internet. The TCP/IP protocol used for the Internet is not dependent on spectrum segregation. Packets from myriad voices can travel to myriad destinations without co-mingling. This page you are reading does not contain text or images from other web pages that may have been accessed around the same time or near the same location. No one has ever had to get the FCC’s permission before posting something on Facebook, sending e-mail, or setting up a web page. Rasmussen did not need FCC’s permission to post its specious report. No one is suggesting that the FCC should have any role whatever in determining who can communicate to the public using the Internet.
Second, the FCC regulates content by, for example, prohibiting certain “indecent” speech over the airwaves. This is in part because the airwaves belong to the public, and are a scarce resource when it comes to discrete broadcast spectrum. But the FCC has absolutely no authority to regulate indecent speech over the Internet, and no one is advocating that it be given such authority. You can be as raunchy as you like. If it is bad enough, you may get prosecuted for transmitting child pornography or obscene material, but you will be facing federal or local prosecutors, and never the FCC. No one is suggesting that the FCC should have any role whatever in regulating the content of Internet communications the way it regulates the content of radio and television broadcasts.
In fact, no one is asking the FCC to regulate “the Internet” at all, but rather, to regulate those who wish to regulate it. Let me put it more bluntly: Powerful Internet Service Providers (ISPs) manage the flow of information to and from their subscribers. Instead of just competing to provide the fastest, cheapest service to their subscribers with the least downtime, they want to regulate that flow of information as well. Let me repeat that: Some ISPs, not the FCC, want to regulate the Internet. The FCC is being asked to prevent them from doing so. Those who lobby against government regulation of the Internet are in effect lobbying against anyone stopping them from privately regulating the Internet. It’s like the contractor who builds a highway and wants to install a few tollbooths along the way, collecting fees to direct favored traffic to the express lanes it built, and leaving bumper-to-bumper headaches for those unable or unwilling to pay. The more powerful ones might let UPS trucks travel faster than FedEx trucks because UPS paid more. If similarly minded contractors vociferously decry “government regulation of the highways” when they are threatened with an order prohibiting them from managing the traffic that way, we would ridicule them. Those who oppose Internet neutrality should be subject to similar ridicule. ISPs should be delivering Internet traffic as dumb pipes, not getting involved in the content of our end-to-end communications or the identities of whom we are communicating with. It’s great for, say Amazon, Netflix and others to compete for which can deliver the best movie streaming service. It is insane to allow my ISP to deliver one service faster than the other just because it got money under the table.
A more honest question than asking “Should the Federal Communications Commission regulate the Internet like it does radio and television?” would have been to ask, “Should your Internet Service Provider be permitted to regulate the Internet the way the Mafia regulates how much ‘protection’ money a business in your neighborhood must pay to not get ransacked?”