broadband

Let me try to explain to a consumer what the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) arbitrarily has done, and apparently intends to do, for consumer internet privacy protection going forward.

We free marketeers repeatedly reassert the obvious – that government abusing the private sector hurts the private sector. Pro-government fetishists try mightily to deny Reality – claiming that bigger government doesn’t damage the sectors over which it lords.

In arbitrarily applying Title II telecommunications rules to only the ISP half of Internet communications, while politically exempting the entire edge half of Internet communications in its Open Internet order, the FCC has ensured that information that was proprietary and controllable in the closed telephone world becomes public and uncontrollable in the open Internet world.

One thing at which the Left is very good is naming things – so as to hide and obfuscate what these things actually do. Because if they admitted what these things actually do – they would poll…well, right where Congress is polling.

The central overriding question in the USTelecom v. FCC case challenging the FCC’s Open Internet Order may be: did the FCC read Judge Tatel right in that he de facto guided the FCC to pursue Title II to create the most solid legal foundation for net neutrality? That has been the public legal mantra of the FCC and the net neutrality movement for well over a year.

Do not let the FCC’s likely unlawful means of broadband Internet regulation, i.e. Title II, distract you from the additional likelihood that two primary ends of supposed net neutrality “policy canon” i.e. bans against “paid prioritization” and “two-sided markets” (only users should pay), are also likely unlawful, even under Title II, sans new legislation.

No surprise that political activist Larry Lessig, the intellectual leader of the net neutrality and anti-copyright movements, ran one of the most cynical, undemocratic, and stunt-driven Presidential candidacies ever, because that’s exactly the kind of cynical, undemocratic, stunt-driven campaigns his political followers have run to un-democratically dictate net neutrality and to undermine copyright protection online.

One of the more important hearings for the future of broadband took place last week in the House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee. The Committee gathered to discuss “Breaking Down Barriers to Broadband Infrastructure Deployment.”

There are troubling signals that the FCC is gearing up to further increase regulation of cable — on top of the extra-legal new utility regulation the FCC already did in its 2015 Open Internet Order.

The FCC’s approach to special access is all wrong because they should be doing the exact opposite of what they are doing. The FCC should be price de-regulating special access, not signaling increased micro-regulation of special access rate terms and conditions.

It is timely to fact check the Federal Government’s storyline that broadband is a ‘core utility,’ given a new White House report that directs municipalities that broadband is a “core utility… like water, sewer and electricity;” and given that a senior FCC official recently encouragedlocal municipalities at the NATOA conference to build their own local broadband infrastructure with the FCC’s backing now that the FCC has claimed the legal authority to preempt State laws limiting municipal broadband.

Being Leftist means never having to say you’re sorry. Being a huge Barack Obama-Democrat donor doesn’t hurt either. Being incredibly generous in support of Leftism also allows you to enact incredibly anti-free market, anti-Reality policies that are a huge boon to you – at the exorbitant expense of the private sector players who made your successes possible.

One of the advantages Big Government advocates have in their efforts to end the private sector – is the size of the victim. A $17-trillion-a-year economy is so huge – it almost always takes a lot of time to dismantle.