Michael A. Livermore is the executive director of the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University School of Law, a nonpartisan think tank using economics and law to protect the environment, public health, and consumers. Its work on net neutrality includes Free To Invest: The Economic Benefits of Preserving Net Neutrality . The views expressed here do not necessarily represent those of Ars Technica.

Within a few months of Inauguration Day, the next president will need to decide on how to deal with serious risks to the Internet’s innovation machine. If it goes the wrong way, online startups could be threatened and users could be in for less high-quality content on the Web. Clearly, that would be a downer, but it would also have significant financial implications, as the online sector powers economic growth with investment dollars. By 2016, US e-commerce retail sales will reach $362 billion dollars, and that's only a fraction of the value of the Web.

This value is threatened if net neutrality protections, which ensure that all users are treated equally by their Internet Service Providers, are allowed to lapse. But with the information provided thus far, voters have an incomplete picture of how the candidates will handle upcoming challenges to such a profitable sector. Going forward, President Obama and Governor Romney should offer a much clearer road map.

Obama once made bold statements in support of an open Internet, but actual policy has been more muddled. His Federal Communications Commission (FCC) issued a watered-down rule that provided some net neutrality protections but left the measure open to legal challenge. Broadband companies took the opportunity to sue, and they have a good case. The decision is expected to come down in the spring of 2013—a few months after the next president is sworn in.

If the court rules against the FCC’s net neutrality measure, the commander-in-chief will have two options: do nothing and let Internet openness die, or come out guns blazing by exercising the full measure of the FCC’s authority to protect the current open Internet.

From the performance of Obama’s FCC so far, it isn’t clear which way Obama will lean if he makes it through November’s election. Much could depend on how the issue figures into the campaign. If the issues of the Internet economy fly under the radar this fall and no one is paying attention, a compromise with industry—for example, “voluntary” standards with no teeth—seems possible. The more Obama talks about Internet policy on the campaign trail, the more attention to the matter from the public and the more likely a strong FCC response will be.

Last November, the Obama Administrations issued a veto threat on a Senate resolution that would overturn the FCC’s net neutrality rules. At the time, the White House said, “the open Internet enables entrepreneurs to create new services without fear of undue discrimination by network providers.” The presidential statement expressed concern that overturning the FCC rule would “cast uncertainty over those innovative new businesses that are a critical part of the Nation’s economic recovery.” These comments indicate a strong commitment to the FCC rule, but since then the president has remained nearly mum on the subject.

For his part, Romney has criticized open Internet protections in his economic platform, saying that the FCC “imposed network neutrality regulations (defying both the legislature and judiciary) that restrict how Internet service providers manage the digital transmissions flowing through their networks.”

His answer to a question posed at a town hall meeting in New Hampshire last December offered one blunt hint about his policy preferences. Asked what role he thought the government needed to play in regulating the Internet, he responded, "Almost none."

This looks like vivid opposition to net neutrality. But then what? How would Romney handle a court decision striking down the current rule? Would he simply let the open Internet fail? Little more than broad-stroke opposition has been made clear and, with only a few months till the election, voters deserve more information.

To varying degrees, the candidates both opposed the unpopular Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect IP Act (PIPA) bills in Congress earlier this year. But since the problems with those bills were more about privacy and free speech, their stances on these don’t shed much light on how they plan on treating net neutrality and the Internet economy more broadly.

These and a smattering of additional statements are the extent of the public’s clues as to how the two candidates will treat net neutrality and the open Internet.

The next president will wield enormous power over the future of the Internet through his choices for FCC appointments, his veto power, and his ability to make his case to Congress and the public. With such a huge and important sector of the national economy at stake, Obama and Romney should be forced to state their positions in more detail, giving the American people a clear choice on the future of the Internet.