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Monday, December 20, 2010

FCC's Power Grab Of The Internet

Defying Congress and a court decision, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is trying to regulate the Internet in the name of freedom. In actuality, it is freedom of the Internet that's being threatened.

According to Robert M. McDowell, Republican member of the FCC in the Wall Street Journal:

Tomorrow morning the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will mark the winter solstice by taking an unprecedented step to expand government's reach into the Internet by attempting to regulate its inner workings. In doing so, the agency will circumvent Congress and disregard a recent court ruling.


How did all this start? According to McDowell, it was a campaign promise by Barack Obama:

It wasn't long ago that bipartisan and international consensus centered on insulating the Internet from regulation. This policy was a bright hallmark of the Clinton administration, which oversaw the Internet's privatization. Over time, however, the call for more Internet regulation became imbedded into a 2008 presidential campaign promise by then-Sen. Barack Obama. So here we are.

Last year, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski started to fulfill this promise by proposing rules using a legal theory from an earlier commission decision (from which I had dissented in 2008) that was under court review. So confident were they in their case, FCC lawyers told the federal court of appeals in Washington, D.C., that their theory gave the agency the authority to regulate broadband rates, even though Congress has never given the FCC the power to regulate the Internet. FCC leaders seemed caught off guard by the extent of the court's April 6 rebuke of the commission's regulatory overreach.

In May, the FCC leadership floated the idea of deeming complex and dynamic Internet services equivalent to old-fashioned monopoly phone services, thereby triggering price-and-terms regulations that originated in the 1880s. The announcement produced what has become a rare event in Washington: A large, bipartisan majority of Congress agreeing on something. More than 300 members of Congress, including 86 Democrats, contacted the FCC to implore it to stop pursuing Internet regulation and to defer to Capitol Hill.


The FCC appears to be reversing itself and is trying to ensnarl the Internet into its tentacles.

Contact your member of congress today and tell them to stop the FCC!

To read the full article, go here.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

This would to large extent ruin the Internet. The Internet would not have become the wonderous thing it is with government regulation. It is especially offensive- and grimly comical- that the FCC wants to regulate the Internet with early telephone regulations from the 1880's.

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