FCC's Unaccountable Government Internet Takeover

Summary: The FCC's new proposed net neutrality regulations will likely pave the way for a complete government takeover of the Internet. Such a huge change in public policy that should originate in Congress where it can be subject to public debate, not with unelected bureaucrats at the FCC. Transcript: Net neutrality via the FCC. FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski today will announce that he is pursuing net neutrality regulations at the Federal Communications Commission, not waiting for Congress to act. We’ve talked before about the implications of such regulations most famously pushed by Robert McChesney, a socialist revolutionary at the group Free Press, who does not mind and in fact likes the fact that these regulations would destroy private investment in the internet, force the government to come in and take over the network, run it like infrastructure, run it like a highway system. That’s right. These regulations are the first step towards a government controlled, government owned internet, sweeping away all of the dramatic innovation, all of the great competition and improvement we’ve seen over the past ten years since the internet has been open to commercial development and competition between the cable companies and the phone companies. The FCC is doing this without Congress passing a law. They are simply asserting the authority onto themselves to make up these rules. The supposed problem that they are trying to solve is that they believe that ISPs, the phone and cable companies will start to block access to lawful websites, will start to force people to go to particular sites that they have contracts with to do particular mischief of that sort. This will never happen. There are no examples of it happening, and if it did happen, the market would discipline them because if the cable company you have starts blocking your access to internet sites, you’ll switch to the phone company. This is an intensely competitive marketplace, becoming more and more competitive as wireless becomes a legitimate substitution for home wire line broadband access, which will be even more the case with 4th Generation LTE deployment. Look, bottom line, this is a huge, huge regulatory power grab that could dramatically transform the internet, lead to more government control, and possibly destroy the internet as a realm for organizing and resistance against government policies that people disagree with. It should not be pursued at the FCC. Any such change should be legislative. It should come out of the elected branch, Congress. Thanks.