Professor Barbara van Schewick weighs in on the impact Internet “fast lanes” would have on product innovation in America in this Today Online (Singapore) article. 

United States President Barack Obama’s proposal for an open Internet would be a victory for Netflix and its binge-watching users, and may be a bigger boon for a generation of start-ups working on tools to connect cars, thermostats and even offshore oil rigs to the Web.

In urging the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to regulate broadband under the “strongest possible rules”, the President aligned himself with Netflix, Reddit, Yahoo! and others that contend equal transmission speeds are better for their customers. He proposed an explicit ban on Internet Service Providers being able to demand extra payments for speedy delivery of content and data.

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Proposals around fast lanes for the Internet would have “crushed product innovation in America”, said Professor Barbara van Schewick, a law professor at Stanford University.