I fight authority, Authority always wins

I been doing it since I was a young kid

I come out grinnin’

I fight authority, Authority always wins

– John Cougar Mellencamp, “Authority Song”

Our friend and strong Net neutrality proponent Harold Feld is out with this ringing endorsement of the FCC’s existing legal authority to protect consumers’ online rights. Good for him, though we’d add that we’ve been making much the same “existing protections” argument for two years. (See here, here and especially here.)

Still, for two reasons, the more attention on this issue, the better. First, it totally undercuts the hypothetical horror stories that some Net neutrality advocates have pushed to justify a new law. Remember the refrain about Net users finding their favorite website deliberately degraded? By Feld’s own analysis, if such a thing happened, regulators and the courts already have the tools necessary to put a quick stop to it.

Second, once there’s agreement that Net users already are protected by enforceable federal rules, the whole rationale for new rules explodes. That’s when the Net neutrality debate shifts to the real issue – pushing deployment costs away from large content companies and onto consumers.

So whether you choose to believe us or Harold Feld or the FCC Chairman, the fact remains that Net users have and will continue to enjoy an open Web for years to come.