Earlier today, Representative John Curtis from Utah’s 3rd Congressional district gathered a small group of business people, technologists, service providers, and community representatives to discuss the prickly subject of net neutrality. Congressman Curtis is known in his home state for a pragmatic approach to political dialogue, and this kind of round-table is a perfect example. With representatives from various industries and views on the matter, Congressman Curtis lead the discussion the different views and finding an agreeable path forward. To the great credit of the Congressman and others there, everything was civil and respectful the entire time.

But that doesn’t mean there was total agreement. Is the internet a public utility? Is it an information or telecommunications service? What about deterring competition and investment? These are some of the basic questions in a net neutrality debate that get wonky in a hurry.

An overwhelming majority of Americans across the political spectrum support net neutrality. Honoring the guiding principles of the internet — freedom, neutrality, openness — makes sense to us at Mainframe, too. Which is why we need a new internet, where those hallmarks can become a full-fledged reality (more on that below).

Until that day, it’s our stance that net neutrality is preferable to granting a few often monopolistic Internet Service Providers the power to throttle, block, prioritize, and manipulate traffic and content.

If content is not treated equally, it can be suppressed. Information should be freely accessible to all, not just those who can afford to pay extra. Any prioritizing or sorting of traffic sets a new precedent that would likely welcome further corporate and state censorship, and could embolden those who already do.

Proponents of net neutrality often phrase their advocacy in terms of keeping the internet free. This asserts that it is free, but is it? Any access to internet 2.0 first requires we forfeit basic privacy and data ownership. And for many around the world, access based on even those terms isn’t an option. An estimated two-thirds of the world’s population is burdened by state censorship and internet restrictions, and internet freedom continues to decline year by year.

In truth, the internet has not been open. It has not been secure. Its decades old infrastructure is fatally flawed. So long as we have any gatekeepers, our networks and their data will remain vulnerable to suppression, manipulation, and shut down. The internet will never be free so long as anyone has the power to surveil, censor, and unilaterally control it, as countless revelations prove. All of these issues remain because, one way or the other, the web remains centralized.

A free and open internet can’t hinge on lawmakers or the right law. Because laws can change; rules can change. A federal policy of net neutrality itself was instituted, repealed, and now faces a repeal of the repeal. The spigot of access can be turned off at any moment, by company or state. This kind of uncertainty can bring infrastructure development to a standstill. And further, how can we look to be saved by the same government that monitors and stores every bit of our data?

What Mainframe is building upends the need for all of this discussion and regulation, one way or the other. If we can democratize technology with fully encrypted, decentralized networks, we no longer have to depend on the benevolence of any overlord.

In the end, new laws can only serve as damage control. We don’t need more rules. We need innovation. We need better technology and more choices, so freedom and privacy are first class citizens for all, whether you’re from America, China, Iran, or anywhere else.

We applaud Congressman Curtis in his efforts to full understand the dynamics, and deploy a functional but not overly-burdening framework for content providers, service providers, and consumers. The discussion is far from over, and we’re proud to be contributing to the solution.