Yes, the Google-Verizon Deal is Still Evil

Kevin Drum takes you through the geeky details and libertarian arguments of the Google-Verizon deal and concludes we still need net neutrality.

Still, there are real benefits to providing routine, high-speed internet infrastructure to everyone. It means that small, innovative net-based companies can compete more easily with existing giants. It means schoolchildren can get fast access to a wide variety of content, not just stuff from Microsoft and Google. It means we have a more level playing field between content providers of all kinds.

Sometimes universal access is a powerful economic multiplier — think postal service and electricity and interstate highways — and universal access to a robust internet is to the 21st century what those things were to the past. If, instead of an interstate highway system, we'd spent most of our money building special toll roads for Wal-Mart and UPS, would that have been a net benefit for the country? I'd be very careful before deciding that it would have been.

For now, then, count me on the side of a purer version of net neutrality, in which the backbone infrastructure stays robust because everyone — including the big boys — has an incentive to keep it that way. I'm willing to be persuaded otherwise, but Verizon and Google are going to have to do the persuading. And it better be pretty convincing.

Read the whole thing.