(My wife Marilyn, no great fan of our President, is alarmed over the Administration’s veiled attempts to regulate and ultimately control the Internet. The supposed goal of providing “equal access” to everyone is the Trojan Horse here, and although we are confident Internet users are strong enough to defend the medium against whatever radical-leftist depredations Mr. Obama may have in mind, we are not so blithely unconcerned as to ignore the threat entirely. Marilyn’s essay explains what’s at stake. RA)
Why should the FCC regulate the internet? Well they shouldn’t, but that hasn’t stopped legions of media watchdogs, consumer advocacy groups and every talking-head panel on PBS from heralding the dangers to our public welfare if the Feds don’t take over the internet “for the people.” These do-gooders want the FCC to classify the internet as a telecommunications service, which would give the Feds the power to regulate who gets the service (everyone!), how much it can cost (profit should not be the issue here) and how each bit traveling through the pipes must be treated…(why, fairly, of course). Oh, and they can make the ISPs pay into a federal universal-service fund used to provide telecommunications services to poor areas. This must be done, they say, to keep the internet “open” and fair.
What’s at stake? It appears a lot of hypothetical “threats” to our freedom to send and receive the information we want through the pipes owned by private, profit-mongering companies like Comcast, AT&T and Verizon. Charges that these capitalistic behemoths can’t wait to choose favorites and pick winners among content providers drives the social justice wonks to the perverse conclusion that an all-encompassing Federal regulation is the only solution to the problem. What problem? Apparently, there have been two breaches of bit-rate “neutrality” in seven years, one of them involving the notorious Bit Torrent file sharing case with spy-novel insinuations of content discrimination of material that was purported to be unpopular with some members of Congress (wonder which ones?) Both issues were resolved. Seven years later, all is swell. But…….it could happen again!
Pleasing the Customer
Given that the ISPs make their money providing what customers want, at a speed they want, for a price they’re willing to pay, it seems highly unlikely that they would pose a censorship-type threat to their own customers (Comcast could make Foxnews.com really slow-loading and choppy in an effort to lure browsers over to their own Msnbc.com, but if you look at the viewership numbers, Comcast would just be cutting off its nose…….by angering that many customers). Much more likely and believable is that Obama has his eye on the prize of internet control (achievable through FCC regulating its “neutrality”).
Obama has made it very clear that the internet carries too much information — information that has become “a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation.” That much of the information is just not very flattering to our thin-skinned Litigator-in-Chief, can’t be ruled out as a motivation to get more control and kick some ass. Couple that with his FCC appointments — a roster that reads like the guest list at Hugo Chavez’ “Information for Everyone” dinner dance — and you start to see the logic in stopping someone from deciding what is “good” information and what we can do without. Can he do it? Of course not. Trying to regulate the internet would be like trying to regulate the tides.
Watchdogs Excluded
The FCC is currently in talks (“stakeholder meetings” – you know, like the Feds had with insurance companies before the passage of Obamacare) with AT&T, Verizon, Comcast and the other usual suspects, but they have excluded the watchdog consumer groups who know that the Internet must be “protected” from all that bad stuff that might happen. I wouldn’t let them in either. They give filibuster a whole new luster. What will likely happen is these stakeholders will sit in these meetings for a couple more months; come to some loop-hole filled “agreement” right before the elections; Obama can look like he reined them in and put boots on their throats; and then the Dems will get slaughtered, and life – with the internet intact – will go on.
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Fascism/Corporatism entering the digital media
Getting uglier, presidency by presidency