It has been...
Without a "net neutrality" problem. Strangely however, with every passing “no-problem” day, the pro-regulation crowd becomes ever more shrill and ever more insistent that if government doesn’t regulate, it will be “the end of the Internet as we know it”!
Take Action and Stop the Takeover
The Federal Communications Commission is moving ahead with proposed "Open Internet" rules, which would give federal regulators vast new powers, and ultimately lead to government control of the Internet.
Join The Internet Freedom Coalition
The Internet has become a powerful communications and economic force because it has been free from government interference. To make sure the power and promise of the Internet continues, we need to keep it free of government interference.
Stand Together
By Bill Turner
The Cypress Times
Americans, we must stand together. If you believe in the Constitution, love America, believe in capitalism and free markets, set the other issues aside. Are you against socialism, communism, Marxism, and large government? If so, set aside the other issues. Democrats and Republicans, RINO’s and Constitutionalists, we agree on seventy five percent of the issues, the issues that are centered on liberty and freedom. The issues we do not agree upon, the social issues, do not matter if we lose the battle on liberty. We must stand together to be free. Failure to stand for liberty and unite all of our groups will lead us down the path to serfdom, in a feudal state, controlled by Obama and his thugs. Put your ego aside, but your agenda aside, drop the twenty five percent we do not agree on and save our country. We can duke it out later, over the other issues, but if we fail to preserve our liberty, we will be slaves to the state and none of the other issues will matter.
Lawyer questions FCC’s authority on Net neutrality rules
By Grant Gross
Computerworld Networking
March 3, 2010 (IDG News Service) The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) lacks the statutory authority to make network neutrality rules prohibiting broadband providers from selectively blocking or slowing some Internet traffic, a former U.S. solicitor general said Wednesday.
If the FCC wants the authority to proceed with its Net neutrality, or open Internet, rulemaking proceeding, it should go to Congress to get permission, said Gregory Garre, who served as solicitor general, the U.S. government’s lawyer before the Supreme Court, under former President George W. Bush.
Think Tank: Net Neutrality Rules Harmful, Unnecessary
By Maisie Ramsay
Wireless Week
The American Consumer Institute says net neutrality regulations are not only unnecessary but could restrict growth and innovation in the broadband industry.
The Washington, D.C.-based think tank has issued a 59-page report on its findings around the FCC’s proposed net neutrality rules. The group argues there is no evidence that net neutrality regulation would promote innovation in the Internet ecosystem.
“We find that innovation is thriving at both the core and the edge of the network in the current policy environment, which has fundamentally allowed the Internet to evolve with little government involvement,” said Larry Darby and Joseph Fuhr in the institute’s report. “Further, we find no evidence that greater FCC involvement in markets for broadband services would protect or promote innovation in the Internet Ecosystem. Indeed, we believe that such intervention is more likely to discourage innovation than to stimulate it.”
Net neutrality: Get out of the way, bureaucrats
By Jeffrey Mazzella and Timothy Lee of the Center for Individual Freedom.
We’ve all heard the old adage, “Lead, follow or get out of the way.”
There is perhaps no other issue for which that adage better applies today than Internet innovation. There are the leaders—telecommunications and cable companies investing tens of billions of dollars annually in broadband network expansion and innovation.
There are the followers—countless American consumers and businesses that rely on evolving broadband connections for Internet access.
Save The Internet From Title II Regressives
By Seth Cooper, Free State Foundation
Amidst continuing doubts about whether the Federal Communications Commission’s Title I ancillary jurisdiction gives it power to impose net neutrality regulation of broadband access services, in recent FCC proceedings Public Knowledge, the Consumer Federation of America and others have urged the Commission to move broadband “information services” from Title I classification to Title II.
But such calls for net neutrality or other common carrier regulation of broadband services through Title II lack any grounding in existing, cognizable marketplace harm or failure. And imposing monopoly-style regulation on broadband fails to take seriously both the existing state of competition and the potential for new competition offered by wireless broadband in the dynamic modern communications services market.
“Net Neutrality” To Kill Jobs
by Tim Andrews – as posted on Americans for Tax Reform
As the Administration continues in its plans to takeover the internet, under what is laughingly called “net-neutrality”, the The American Consumer Institute released a detailed report earlier this week on the effects of this regulation on innovation and jobs.
Not surprisingly, the result was unequivocal: “The study found that new Internet regulations, including those now under consideration by the FCC, would restrict technology advances, innovation and job growth.
In the midst of an economic downturn and high unemployment, the Administration is pursuing a radical ideological agenda that will result in a slower internet, less innovation, and fewer jobs.
Great. Just great.
Study: Net Neutrality Bad for Innovation, Investment and Consumers
by Capitol Confidential - as posted on BigGovernment.com
A study released Tuesday by the American Consumer Institute contains some bad news for proponents of net neutrality. Whereas advocates of “open internet” rules often argue that the institution of the policy is necessary to preserve innovation and would benefit consumers, the study finds that “new Internet regulations, including those now under consideration by the FCC, would restrict technology advances, innovation and job growth.”
Net Neutrality Could Harm Competition, says report
George S. Ford and Michael Stern of the Phoenix Center released a report today entitled Sabotaging Content Competition: Do Proposed Net Neutrality Regulations Promote Exclusion?. The economic analysis concludes that network neutrality regulations would increase, not decrease incentives for broadband service providers to employ exclusionary tactics that could harm competition.
Don’t subject the Internet to politicians, bureaucrats
By Carl Gipson
Washington Policy Center
Also on Tech Liberation
I recently wrote an op-ed for the American Legislative Exchange Council’s Inside ALEC publication. It’s decidedly non-technical, as most correspondence with a majority in the legislative branch must be. In my dealings with those in state government positions, it seems that only in the last few months have many of them become aware of the FCC’s Net Neutrality proposals — or even the issue itself. I don’t blame them. State legislators are often more concerned with local issues such as solving their budget deficits or finding funding for critical government operations.
But it’s important that they also keep an eye on what’s happening in “the other Washington,” (as we Washington state-ers like to call it) as the policies from Congress, the Administration and federal agencies trickle down to affect each and every one of us.
The text of the op-ed is after the break.
“Four years ago, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) issued an advisory statement that laid out four principles of government regulation of the Internet. The principles, which have no statutory authority, include the right of consumers to access lawful Internet content of their choice, the right to run applications and services of their choice, the right to connect legal devices that do not harm networks, and competition among network, application, service and content providers.
New FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, with strong backing from the Obama Administration, is pushing for this “statement of principles” to become enforceable regulations, along with two other rules that would regulate how Internet Service Providers (ISPs) manage their own networks, whether wired or wireless, and require ISPs to be “transparent” about their network management practices.
Supporters of the concept of Net Neutrality tout their desire for openness and competition while guaranteeing consumer access to data and content.
However, as innocuous as the proposed FCC rules might sound – who could be against network management transparency and access to legal content? – subjecting the Internet and ISPs to an entire new regulatory structure threatens to curtail the explosive growth of the Internet. This is ironic, given that one of the Obama Administration’s goals is to accelerate broadband deployment to Americans – a goal which will cost ISPs tens of billion of dollars.
Since the beginning of the commercial Internet in the early 1990s, most consumers accessed it via an all-you-can-eat data subscription plan; e.g., everyone pays the same subscription price per month for as much data as you want. As technology advanced consumers began using more data. This culminated in such services as Napster and BitTorrent – peer-2-peer services (P2P) that allowed direct sharing of large files between two consumers. Often, the P2P connections resulted in sharing pirated copyright material such as movies and music (but that is a whole other conversation).
Internet Service Providers, in order to lessen the disproportionate impact that the P2Pers were having on the network, began looking into ways of protecting other consumers whose connections were being slowed down by the P2P bandwidth hogs. Some of the ideas floated or adopted include usage caps, and tiered pricing – the ability to pay more for faster, better service. Some of the scare tactics Net Neutrality supporters use have never, in actuality, occurred. There have been no instances in the United States where consumers cannot access legal content, control of the Internet has not been wrested away from the people into the hands of greedy corporations. No one controls the Internet, and no one, including the government, should.
Need proof that the Internet has not suffered from a lack of strong regulatory oversight? Look at the immense growth rate of both users and data since the turn of the century. In the year 2000, only 5.1 million Americans subscribed to broadband connections. At that time broadband often meant a 1Mbps download connection for cable subscribers, or a paltry 500Kbps connection for DSL users.
In 2000 there was no YouTube, no Facebook or Twitter, no Netflix or Amazon.com streaming video services, no Blackberry or iPhone. These types of innovations simply would not have worked. The capacity to carry that kind of data did not exist, nor did the demand.
Contrast that with 2008 after broadband usage, both wired and wireless (wireless data connections were barely a thought in 2000) had experienced a 500-fold increase in just eight years. Today there are over 80 million households subscribing to broadband.
Looking forward there will be a leveling off in the rate in increase of broadband users, but data demands will continue to skyrocket, particularly in the mobile broadband arena. Cisco Systems estimates that the Internet in 2012 will be seventy-five times larger than it was in 2002 — and that Internet traffic will generate the equivalent of seven billion DVDs each month. Cisco also estimates that Internet video in 2012 will be nearly 400 times the size of the entire U.S. Internet backbone in 2000.
Given this spectacular growth, a new regulatory structure like that pushed by Net Neutrality proponents makes no economic sense. When a powerful third party, such as a federal agency, regulates a limited resource, such as broadband capacity, the market itself becomes subject to political whims and special-interest carve-outs, which will only harm consumers.
Unfortunately, several state and city officials around the nation have also tried to get in on the act of regulating the Internet in their small jurisdiction. It seems regulatory proliferation in this area knows no bounds. Fortunately, courts have time and again rebuffed efforts at anything less than federal regulatory authority. As a result, some states and cities are petitioning the FCC to move forward with Net Neutrality.
No one would disagree that the growth of the Internet has been anything less than transformative on our society and economy, which has happened with minimal government interference. It will continue to grow if we leave it alone. Regulating an industry to achieve peace of mind comes at a price – most often that price is paid in missed opportunities and lost innovations and therefore cannot be measured.
With new restrictions in place, innovators will have to overcome artificial barriers and find success despite regulatory obstacles, not because of them.
The federal government should protect intellectual property rights and continue to encourage long-term investment in our online network by keeping the regulatory barrier low.”
FCC: We’ll Just Give Ourselves Authority to Regulate the Internet
Kelly William Cobb
Americans for Tax Reform
As we’ve mentioned before, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has begun an unprecedented foray into a hitherto untouched area: Internet regulation. The socialist organizations Free Press and Public Knowledge, along with new FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, have long waged a campaign for “Net Neutrality,” which would lay the foundations for government regulation of the Net and how information travels through the lines to your home. Now realizing the FCC might not have the legal authority to do so, these groups have proposed completely redefining how the FCC treats the Internet to pursue this ambitious power grab.
For years, the FCC has determined that the Internet be regulated as an “information service” under Title I of the Communications Act (see here, here, here, and here). But since this classification only gives the FCC ancillary and tenuous jurisdiction to regulate the Net, there is now talk of simply reclassifying it as a Title II service – placing it under the same regulatory structure as traditional phone lines that dates back one hundred years.
So, what would this mean? Say goodbye to free markets and competition that has brought Internet to over 95% of Americans and developed at least six current choices of Internet service (from cable to wireless broadband). Say hello to vague and unprecedented legal authority that would turn the Net into a series of dumb, government-controlled pipes and permit the FCC to virtually regulate how fast your Internet is, how your Internet is priced, and even whether you would have to pay the same ridiculous taxes and universal service fund charges currently levied on your landline phone bill. The justification for the change? An “open” Internet. Yes, that same terrific and open Internet you already enjoy.
As FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell stated so eloquently, “innovation and investment in broadband did not come about due to a government mandate.” We couldn’t agree more. The Internet has become the marvel it is today by keeping the FCC’s hands off it entirely.
Internet Freedom Coalition Comments to the FCC, Opposing Network Neutrality Regulations
Before the
FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION
Washington, DC 20554
In the Matter of
Preserving the Open Internet, GN Docket No. 09-191
Broadband Industry Practices WC Docket No. 07–52; FCC 09–93
Notice of Proposed Rulemaking
Comments of the Internet Freedom Coalition
Introduction
The Internet Freedom Coalition is an ad hoc coalition of organizations and individuals committed to the continued growth and improvement of the Internet, who believe regulations and taxes are harmful to those ends. The Internet Freedom Coalition believes that a free and open Internet is beneficial, but argues that regulatory intervention in the well-functioning marketplace that has thus far produced a vast, free and open network would unnecessarily limit the current and future supply of bandwidth, and would harm both producers and consumers. These comments are attributable only to the individual signatories.
