Scott Cleland

Since Google chose that apt metaphor, and boasted about how easy Google makes it to “check out” your private data and “leave” to a competitor, lets test if you can ever “in fact leave” Google-Eye’s pervasively invasive online surveillance — from a privacy perspective.

The Sunday Telegraph reports that the EU is poised to fine Google an EU record ~€3b for “web search monopoly abuse” and that “Google will be banned from continuing to manipulate search results to favour itself and harm rivals.”

When one’s actions demonstrably create a worse rather than better outcome net-net, like the FCC’s new Title II ISP privacy policy does, others would justifiably consider it a mistake.

Few outside of Alphabet-Google understand the immense market, economic, and technological power of an unaccountable monopoly over the underlying software that controls most all mobile devices in the world. Fortunately EU antitrust enforcers are some of the few who understand it.

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.

The world is watching and taking note of the FCC’s blatant competition double standard that totally favors America’s dominant edge platforms above most everyone and everything else.

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 latest legal brief defending its Open Internet Order, will represent the FCC’s “strongest possible” legal arguments for its Title II net neutrality case – a vainglorious legal fortress.

Right now, while this Title II net neutrality horse race is still being run, the FCC and their political backers are high-fiving everyone in their loge viewing box, because they think that their strong race start means that they have already won the race.

Watching the FCC attempt to construct net neutrality regulations to lord over the Internet is a bit like watching a child build a sand castle and declare himself king of the beach. Neither has really created a kingdom, but at least the latter is cute.

‘While this decision may appear to throw a monkey wrench in the net neutrality regime, in reality it leaves the door open for even more harmful changes.’

In this podcast, The Heartland Institute Director of Communications, Jim Lakely and Senior Policy Analyst, Matthew Glans discuss Scott Cleland’s latest paper “A Modern Vision for the FCC.”