Net Neutrality has failed in the courts over and over again. Some on the far left are talking about renaming the movement, others continue to hammer away at it as-is. Still more have given on on Net Neutrality as the means to get a government power grab on the Internet.
Title II Reclassification is the new gimmick. They’re willing to lie to get it and the power grab would disrupt the economy.
Title II Reclassification is an obscure sounding term, but it means something very simple. The FCC would, by regulatory fiat, roll back regulation to the old days, before 1996, and regulate the Internet like phone companies in the old days. Apply 1930s policy to 2010s technology.
They want to do this because the 1996 Telecommunications Act says that Information Services (like ISPs) cannot be regulated to nearly the same degree as a phone company. That frustrates the radicals because they want to grow government, and slow our Internet down to European speeds.
They like to lie about fast lanes and slow lanes, but the real slow lane is big government run Internet.
Even if you think government should have a role in regulating mergers, the system is broken as the bias is to opposition when there’s no good reason for that.
American companies are under attack all the time online. Even Silk Road II is getting hit, but Democrats in Washington play blame-the-victim again.
Bad news: Ex-Im getting saved wasn’t the only cronyist event in DC last week. The Local Choice act, which would lower cable bills by letting Americans pick and choose which pay local stations they want (bet you didn’t know some local stations are free, and others the cable company has to pay for), lost int he Senate. The cronys in broadcasting, with their government monopolies, were freaking out about how they’d get fewer monopolists’ rents. We need to try when Republicans are in control.
At least the FCC is going to kill another hand out: the sports blackout rule. Sports blackouts should be contractual matters between broadcasters and sports teams, not something written in to FCC regulations. That’s idiotic.