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.
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Right now there’s a huge astroturf campaign going on, spamblasting fake messages to the FCC, pretending that there’s this giant grassroots army of opposition to the idea that people or businesses should be able to pay ISPs for faster service. This is what they’re calling “fast lanes” and the progressives are having a fit.
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Don’t break the net by imposing a new, radical regulatory scheme. Internet access should not be a public utility. It has nothing to do with Net Neutrality. It would kill investment and expansion of high speed services to more people. More regulations hurt the little guy more than the big guy. Regulations hinder competition. Fast lanes become more likely. Netflix is just playing games to get a competitive advantage just like every other lobbying business. And once this gets in, FCC will go all out, the same way it always does.
This is a good site, covering a number of myths about the proposed Title II Reclassification, a dramatic step the radicals are pushing for the FCC to do, basically overturning a key concept of the bipartisan Telecommunications Act, and re-regulating the Internet as a phone service. It’s a terrible idea.
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Public Knowledge, one of the extreme leftists organizations pushing for socialized Internet, with Net Neutrality as the latest wedge to grow government, has been at this a while. Their former President, Gigi Sohn, even left to go work at the FCC to fight for extremism from within. And now we find out just how extreme they are.
Harold Feld, their Senior Vice President and Legal Director, has decided publicly to make fun of critics of the plan they support for government regulation of the Internet, Title II Reclassification of Internet services as … suddenly no longer information services for some reason. He decided to bring up ebola, even as right now people are actually dying of it, and it’s a fear people are actually having right now. Alinskyite tactics here, folks. Just push emotional buttons rather than engage on the issues.
So after Republicans went ahead and avoided major Retransmission Consent reform in the satellite TV reauthorization bill, it turns out the Senate is going to take its own stab at reform.
You see, right now the way that local broadcasters and local cable companies make deals is governed by a set of government mandates called the Retransmission Consent framework. This framework heavily favors broadcasters, on purpose, as an attempt to pick winners and losers in government.
So barring a free market option, we have to decide whether the new option is more or less distorting of the market. I think I support the LOCAL CHOICE plan by Jay Rockefeller and John Thune.
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It’s been a while since I just said it: The Obama FCC is recklessly grabbing power, out of any statutory or Constitutional controls. It does what it wants, when it wants, with the goal of taking as much power as it can, in order to establish greater state control of the digital economy.
Under FCC, we’re not under the rule of law, we’re under the rule of man.
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There’s this crazy idea going around these days that free access to the Internet is a human right. This idea is behind a few different movements going around today. One of them is Net Neutrality, an idea with a name so misleading that the metaphors used to explain it are constantly shifting.
But another idea kicking around is state-run Internet at a local level. This is no better than any other form of Communism, where the state runs the means of production, and must be rejected.
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Well here’s an interesting development. Deb Fischer is no Ted Cruz but Heritage Action does have her slightly above average for a Republican Senator. So it caught my eye to see that she’s working with Cory Booker on the LOCAL TV Act, which would direct the FCC to study how it divides up the country into “Designated Market Areas” (DMAs) to see how some areas might be poorly served by that.
Then I saw the intent, and I think it needs some work.
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Make sure to send me ideas on topics to take apart, folks. I’ve hit a number of important topics, but I don’t always know what needs explaining. I’d like to think I’m a little better than this than the anti-Israel bigots at Vox, so feel free to leave comment suggesting topics to go over.
But tonight I’ll post a simple reminder: Government is bad at Internet, and should leave well enough alone.
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Between the Independence Day weekend, and being sick most of last week, I missed quite a few Tech at Night installments. so many in fact that I just ran out of time putting together Friday’s. So now I have 36 links in my queue sitting in front of me, so I’ll make tonight’s ‘main essay’ simple and to the point.
Arizona needs to start doing something about John McCain, because his love affair with regulation is just going way too far.
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