Policing terra digitalis

In modern times, it is hard to muddy unsullied waters, because, frankly, there aren't many unsullied waters left.

There are footsteps on the moon. That would be, some would say Wednesday morning, because Democrats have yet to establish a strong enough presence there to regulate the lunar surface. That will come, however.

The latest frontier on terra firma is the Internet or the World Wide Web, capitalized because for esoterically minded editors (and who says techies don't have a sense of humor) it is a place. You can sift it through your fingers, like any other place, but if your fingers have to be theoretical to do this, so much the better.

The Federal Communications Commission Tuesday approved net neutrality rules that are among the earliest attempts to establish a constitutional framework for digital communication. These are rules, yes, but they are on the order of a constitutional doctrine, putting the FCC in the position of the founding fathers of the WWW, not only establishing rules, but establishing the FCC's right to make rules in the first place.

By approving net neutrality, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said the commission would "fulfill its historic role as a cop on the beat," a poor choice of phrasing, perhaps, given the Republicans' deeply rooted, hard to treat, tweak-phobia. "Cop on the beat" sounds protective, a little like flag-planting. He should have evoked James Madison, instead: "A man has a property in his opinions and the free communication of them."

Some have asked, if Democrats have a strong enough presence on terra digitalis to do this. Democrats in turn, say someone needs to guarantee, in writing, free speech on the Internet. The rules, essentially, do this by preventing service providers from blocking or slowing transmissions consumers want that might be provided by a rival company. The FCC is saying, essentially, that a company cannot own both the gasoline stations and the highway or, more accurately, if they happen to own the highway, they can't put some cars in the slow lane because they are not buying gasoline at the owner's station.

Although the rules leave wireless largely unsullied for the moment, if the FCC rules stand up in court, the attempt is to say, for example, that a service provider with a commercial bias against YouTube cannot slow or block streaming of YouTube content. That would prevent YouHomeMovies.com from paying a service provider to shut the door on a rival company.

YouTube, however, could pay a service provider to give it faster streaming capacity, but that would be up to YouTube.

Needless to say, service providers, such as Time Warner Cable, Verizon, AT&T and Comcast, have different opinions on net neutrality than YouTube, Facebook, Netflix and other content providers.

Consumer advocates said beware of anything that makes big business happy. Republicans said the same thing about Democrats. Democrats said this is a start. That worried a lot of people.

In international markets Wednesday, the Nikkei 225 index in Japan lost 0.23 percent while the Shanghai composite index in China lost 0.9 percent. The Hang Seng index in Hong Kong rose 0.22 percent while the Sensex in India slid 0.22 percent.

In Australia, the S&P/ASX 200 rose 0.14 percent.

In midday trading in Europe, the FTSE 100 in Britain gained 0.32 percent while the DAX 30 in Germany and the CAC 40 in France were both flat, rising 0.02 percent. The Stoxx Europe 600 rose 0.1 percent.