Tim Lee is Senior Vice President of Legal and Public affairs for the Center for Individual Freedom. 

Federal Newswire

What is the Center for Individual Freedom?

Tim Lee

We were started in 1998 primarily as a First Amendment organization. We've worked a lot on tech, net neutrality, intellectual property…[and] Second Amendment issues. We work in the judicial, executive, and legislative branches, and at federal, state and local levels. 

Federal Newswire

How has the government managed ‘net-neutrality’ in the tech sector?

Tim Lee

The act on which net neutrality is based was passed in 1996. It was at the beginning of the Internet. The federal government deliberately took what was called the light touch, hands off approach. They said this Internet thing is new. We'll let it flourish. We're not going to suffocate it in the crib with government regulations.

Fast forward about 20 years. The Internet is obviously flourishing to the point where online publishers now outnumber hard newspaper publishers and have much more readers and viewers. In that intervening period when the Internet was flourishing just fine, a lot of people on the left got this bright idea that we need to regulate Internet service. Let's fix something that isn't broken. 

The Internet service providers invest billions of dollars building the pipes on which the Internet is carried. The content providers just want to dump all of their content and say, “you get it to our consumers out there.” Some of the edge providers did try to get into the market of providing Internet service, and they realized quickly they didn't do it very well. 

What the Obama administration wanted to do was impose what's called ‘net neutrality,’ and they wanted to start regulating Internet service providers. Well, that sounds great in theory and if you want to call it net neutrality, okay, great. But that's a lie. What we saw was once net neutrality was imposed by the FCC, private investment in broadband declined for the first time ever outside of an economic recession. It failed in two years.

Federal Newswire

Did this cause providers to realize they wouldn’t recoup their investment, and therefore they decided to stop investing?

Tim Lee

Yes, for the first time in history outside of an economic recession, US private broadband investment declined once net neutrality was put in. The Trump administration came in and, under the new FCC chairman Ajit Pai, they rescinded it. They said, “you know what, that was a stupid mistake.”...Well, what happened? It started flourishing. 

Remember a lot of the late-night comedians on TV saying, “remember when Donald Trump destroyed the Internet? Wasn't that crazy?” 

Actually, what happened is we went into COVID. Everybody expected the Internet to crash because everybody was suddenly staying home from work and school and getting on the Internet. Guess what happened? In 2020, Internet speeds increased almost 100% in America. 

In Europe, which follows a more activist net neutrality regime, they did have to throttle back. It was proof right there for everybody to see that free-market light-touch regulatory principles work. We can document it. 

Federal Newswire

How should consumers view the issue?

Tim Lee

Imagine you own a moving company. The federal government comes in and says you…cannot discriminate against people who own mansions.

You have to charge the same amount and guarantee the same delivery for a studio apartment versus a 10-bedroom super mansion. That makes no sense whatsoever to the moving company. 

So you're not going to open a moving company. Or you’re not going to invest as much in that moving company because the federal government is telling you you need to treat and charge everyone exactly the same, and deliver with the same speed, whether they're moving across the continent or just up the block.

That's essentially what net neutrality does. It shoehorns all of these regulations onto Internet service providers. That's a good way of conceptualizing it. It's just a terrible idea by the federal government.

Federal Newswire

What makes our intellectual property laws so important?

Tim Lee

That actually brings us to sort of an overarching point here with regard to intellectual property. For those less familiar with it, intellectual property refers to patents, copyrights, trademarks and trade secrets.

Now, the United States through the years has protected collateral property like no other country in the world. Repeatedly [it is] number-one in terms of protecting patents, copyrights, trade secrets, trademarks. Think about the fruits of that. No nation in history–certainly no nation today–comes anywhere close to the United States in terms of our inventiveness.

The United States is the most powerful, prosperous and inventive nation in human history due directly to the fact that we protect intellectual property like no other country. 

When you hear people want to undermine intellectual property rights, they say, “well, it's utilitarian in content.” No, it's not. Utilitarianism wasn't even a broad popular concept until decades after the Declaration of Independence and Constitution, which by its very terms protects intellectual property.

Federal Newswire

How can people follow your work on these subjects?

Tim Lee

[You can go to our website, www.cfif.org to learn more about what we’re doing on these topics].