Goals of Network Neutrality Rules
The proposal for network neutrality rules is guided by the following principles:
First, the FCC should adopt strong network neutrality rules that preserve the factors that have allowed the Internet to foster application innovation and economic growth, improve democratic discourse, facilitate political organization and action, and provide a more decentralized environment for social, cultural and political interaction in which anybody can participate. These factors that have allowed this are user choice, application-agnosticism, innovation without permission, and low costs of application innovation.
Second, the FCC should adopt rules that provide certainty to innovators, investors, and ISPs alike. ISPs need to know how they can manage their networks. Innovators and their investors need to know that they won’t be discriminated against and that ISPs cannot create new barriers to innovation by charging access fees.
Third, start-ups are small and don’t have many resources, let alone a legal team. So the FCC should adopt rules that can be enforced through simple, straightforward legal processes, not rules that tilt the playing field in favor of large, established companies that can pay armies of lawyers and expert witnesses and afford long, costly proceedings at the FCC.
Fourth, the FCC should adopt rules that give ISPs flexibility to realize their legitimate goals such as network management, price discrimination, or product differentiation, albeit through means that do not distort competition, harm application innovation, or violate user choice.
Fifth, the FCC should adopt that do not overly constrain the evolution of the Internet infrastructure and keep the costs of regulation low.