I’ve been ill but please bear with me. Today brought some huge news for anyone who conducts business or pleasure on the Internet: The FCC has announced its plans to deem and pass Net Neutrality. Specifically, The FCC will defy a court order to stop regulating the Internet by nonsensically deeming the Internet not to be an information service, and regulate it under Title II of the Communications Act.
That sounds mild but it has disastrous consequences.
Title II of the Communications Act gives the FCC strong and broad powers. If the FCC is allowed to put the Internet in the US under those powers, then the Obama administration will have total power to tax Internet users, regulate content on Internet servers, and even institute price controls on Internet services. Does this sound like it has anything to do with “restoring” anything? I don’t think so.
The fact is, the idea that this “Net Neutrality” plan is anything but a power grab was always a lie being pushed by a couple of sources. The first is Google, which has had ties with the administration from Eric Schmidt himself advising Barack Obama, to Andrew McLaughlin who’s been lobbying for Google from his job as Deputy White House CTO. Google stands to benefit when the FCC passes regulations which favor Internet firms like Google over ISPs.
Part of Google’s drive has been in funding Free Press, a radical fringe group dedicated to the nationalization of all mass media in America. Their neo-Marxist vision is to have people’s state commissars dictating all the news you read in the newspaper, watch on television, and see on the Internet. Obviously, they’ve been pushing hard for deem-and-pass “reclassification” of the Internet under FCC total control
However they’re gradually letting slip how much of a fringe group they really are, despite their “Save the Internet” front group having a long list of names. They can’t even decide how many supporters they want to lie and say they have! Is it 1.7 million, or is it 1.6 million? Oops, maybe it’s just 1.0 million. But now the radically pro-Net Neutrality Cecilia Kang, who runs with stories clearly pushed by Google and Free Press without fact checking them first as seen in the updates, claims Free Press is nowhere near a million, and sits at only half that.
Should the tens of millions of Americans on the Internet, we who make a living or keep in touch with friends and family, have our fate determined by a small band of fringe neo-Marxist radicals, or self-seeking lobbyists at Google? I say no. This matter should be decided in the Congress, where the power is legitimately held to tell the FCC what it can and can’t regulate. And problems people have with their ISPs should be handled in the state legislatures, who have oversight of the local franchise monopolies that govern most cable and DSL Internet in America.
Hands off our Internet, FCC. End the power grab now.