Forget Net Neutrality Laws; Just Strengthen Privacy Laws

from the interesting-idea dept

Here's an interesting idea from law professor Paul Ohm, suggesting that rather than focusing on net neutrality laws, if we just had stronger privacy laws, ISPs would be barred from doing any kind of deep packet inspection, since it would violate your privacy. This seems a lot more reasonable to me than focusing on new telco laws. While I support the principle of net neutrality, and believe it's important for the internet to thrive, I'm quite scared of any new telco regulations that hand more regulatory authority over the internet to a government agency. Plus, you know the legislation will create loopholes. But, more general privacy legislation could be much more interesting and could effectively guarantee net neutrality, without a special "net neutrality" law.

Filed Under: laws, net neutrality, paul ohm, privacy