Should Christians support Net Neutrality?

I’ve been asked several times by friends and family what I think about the Net Neutrality issue. I decided to research it a bit and post my thoughts here.

The question is whether the private sector will be allowed to make decisions about the use of its own Internet infrastructure, or whether the government should step in and provide regulatory controls over that infrastructure in pursuit of the free flow of information.

Let me boil this down to the bare essentials. Those who trust the private sector more than the government should be against Net Neutrality. Those who trust government more than the private sector should be for Net Neutrality. I don’t know about you, but I usually land on the side of the private sector, and this is not an exception.

Some confusion has been caused by the fact that the Christian Coalition has (unfortunately) come out in favor of Net Neutrality. This is a disappointing and unfortunate sign of a move to the left in the national leadership of the organization. They are taking pride in being on the same side of this issue as the Obama administration and the far-left MoveOne.org.

On the other hand, Christians can take some comfort in the fact that the Heritage Foundation, Competitive Enterprise Institute, and other conservative groups are squarely against this move to let politicians police the Internet.

I can agree with some of the Christian Coalition’s concerns about not wanting big business to increase prices or restrict bandwidth for religious sites. However, given the choice, I’ll take my chances with big business over politicians. Politicians are far more able (and likely, in the current power-structure of Washington, D.C.) to ignore their constituents and do whatever their biggest donors want.

I recommend that anyone concerned about this issue read up on it independently and become an informed voter. A good place to start is Dick Armey’s column entitled Net Ignorance of the Christian Coalition. Then contact your representatives to let them know you don’t support this power grab by politicians over the flow of Internet content.