Regulating the Internet

The EFF has a piece about the Facebook CEO and his proposal that the Government should regulate the Internet.

While I agree with their analysis one should also look at regulation. It tends to entrench the incumbents, set barriers up for new entrants, and creates quasi if not total monopolies. The regulations are often a produce of the incumbent and meets their needs to inhibit any competitor, raising a cost to entry, and establishing other barriers.

On the other hand Governments love regulations. It gives them more reasons to expand and control.

To quote the EFF:

If governments and regulators want to explore new rules for the Internet, Mark Zuckerberg is the last person they should ask for advice. Instead, they should talk to users, small innovators and platforms, engineers (including the people who built the Internet), civil society, educators, activists, and journalists – all of whom depend on robust protections for both privacy and the freedom to express and communicate without running through a gauntlet of gatekeepers.

Indeed.