The Federal Trade Commission may weigh into the network neutrality debate. This change of venue from the Federal Communications Commission may have significant implications for the outcome of the debate.
In Agendas and Instability in American Politics, Frank Baumgartner and Bryan Jones argue that where a debate takes place helps define what that debate is about, and thus helps determine the outcome of that debate. For example, if school vouchers are debated in the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, the debate is about the constitutionality of tax dollars going to church schools and the outcome will likely be that such funding is inappropriate because it violates the principal of the separation of church and state. If on the other hand the issue is debated in the Children and Families Subcommittee in the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee the debate will be about equal access to education and the result will likely be increased funding for vouchers (for more on this example see “Win the Debate, Not Just the Case”, by Linda Greenhouse in the July 14, 2002 New York Times; Greenhouse looks at the Supreme Court case permitting vouchers and focuses on the definition of the issue as one of Brown v the Board of Education rather than the First Amendment as the key to the ruling).
A similar shift may be afoot in the debate over whether or not internet service providers can favor some content over others thus violating the principal of network neutrality (Wikipedia has a fairly robust description of the issue).
According to CongressDaily AM, “The agency charged with consumer protection and preventing unfair business practices may take a more active role in the next wave of debate over whether new rules are required to ensure access to Internet content, FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz said Wednesday”
To this point the debate over net neutrality has taken place primarily in the Federal Communications Commission, thus defining it as a technical issue within the purview of people who manage content. FCC issues are heard in the Communications, Technology and the Internet Subcommittee of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, which is chaired by Rick Boucher (D-VA), someone very familiar with telecomm issues. Any solution will necessarily be rooted in technology.
Shifting the venue to the Federal Trade Commission means that the issue will one of consumer rights (rather than the rights of producers or distributors). The House Subcommittee with the most interest is Commerce, Trade, and Consumer Protection which is Chaired by Bobbie Rush (D-IL) who has a very different approach to issues than Congressman Boucher does.
This new venue means different witnesses and experts are listened to, different reasons are considered and different assumptions are made. An FTC-rooted debate about consumer protection tilts the eventual outcome toward a guarantee of network neutrality rather than an FCC-rooted debate that tilts toward those who move content around.
This simple shift of where the debate starts may make where the debate ends a forgone conclusion.
