printIf they are not, the FCC’s new Net Neutrality rules sound awfully like price fixing, or a kind of Internet Civil Rights Act, where everyone must be allowed access to everything without discrimination based on, well, what and how much you purchase.
Ruled by regulators we certainly are.
Article I, Section 1, of the United States Constitution, provides that:
All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.
So what is the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) doing regulating the Internet? Nothing out of the ordinary is the answer. The FCC is just doing what all America’s extra-Constitutional government agencies do: manage all aspects of American life. Hence the term “The Managerial State.”
ROBERT M. MCDOWELL, a Republican commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission, calls the FCC’s unconstitutional power grab a “jaw-dropping interventionist chutzpah”; a bypasses of “branches of our government in the dogged pursuit of needless and harmful regulation.”
Let us not forget that the Net Neutrality odyssey began with that bastard Bush. As Wired reports, “In 2005, then-FCC chairman Michael Powell issued a set of principles, the so-called Four Freedoms, which said that internet users had the right to use the lawful software and services they want to on the internet, access their choice of content, use whatever devices they like, and get meaningful information about how their online service plan works.”
Note the Bush boy’s UN-like language: “Four Freedoms.”
This is important: “Both wireless and fixed broadband service providers will have to explain how they manage congestion on their networks. Cable and DSL companies will have to let you use the applications, online services and devices that you want to. Meanwhile, wireless companies will be prohibited from blocking websites and internet telephony services like Skype. Cable and DSL providers would be barred from ‘unreasonably’ discriminating against various online services.”
An Internet Civil Rights Act of sorts.
The one thing that bothers me is this: Is Comcast, for example, not a franchise (“a privilege or right officially granted a person or a group by a government”)? The kind of areal monopoly they enjoy and less-than-optimal service they provide in the market seems to suggest that possibility.
Franchise status might also explain why, as Wired observed, “There was one group … which seemed content with the new rules: the nation’s cable and telecommunications companies, including AT&T, Comcast and Verizon. They’ve been making the rounds in recent weeks signaling their support for Chairman Julius Genachowski’s compromise deal.”
UPDATE (Dec. 22): GREAT MINDS. Michelle Malkin also finds Civil Rights language to be the appropriate source of metaphor to describe the impetus of laws that’ll mandate equal Internet access to all irrespective of the cost of a product or service.
Under the FCC’s new regime, the market will be fattened and socialized and the price system sundered. This means worse service for all paying customers as the incentive to innovate are removed. When will Out “Overlords Who Art in DC” UNDERSTAND that the price and profit system is the key to prosperity? The correct answer is “never.”
Undaunted promoters of Obama FCC chairman Julius Genachowski’s “open Internet” plan to expand regulatory authority over the Internet have couched their online power grab in the rhetoric of civil rights. On Monday, FCC Commissioner Michael Copps proclaimed: “Universal access to broadband needs to be seen as a civil right…[though] not many people have talked about it that way.” Opposing the government Internet takeover blueprint, in other words, is tantamount to supporting segregation. Cunning propaganda, that.
“Broadband is becoming a basic necessity,” civil rights activist Benjamin Hooks added. And earlier this month, fellow FCC panelist Mignon Clyburn, daughter of Congressional Black Caucus leader and Number Three House Democrat James Clyburn of South Carolina, declared that free (read: taxpayer-subsidized) access to the Internet is not only a civil right for every “nappy-headed child” in America, but essential to their self-esteem. Every minority child, she said, “deserves to be not only connected, but to be proud of who he or she is.”
Looks like the long-term purpose is to transform the internet into something resembling the anesthetics of cable-TV: corporate PR, professional sports, and violent porn. But I’m not convinced they’re going to get away with it. Anyway, when the power grid goes… the ‘net goes with it, so the whole issue may be moot.
The FCC was smacked down by the 2nd Circuit in DC UNANIMOUSLY (yes, you read that right). These rules will fall under the same rubric – and hence when they get to the court, they will be struck down. This is simply arrogant regulatory trailblazing.
How about the cable and phone companies paying for having access to peoples’ yards? I don’t have cable, yet they have a green junction box in my yard and are allowed to bury cables across my yard to the neighbor’s home. I receive no rent for this.
The cable and phone companies bitch about companies like Netflix being able to deliver content over their infrastructure free of charge. There are some merits to their claim. Yet, the cable and telcos don’t pay homeowners for the right to lay wires throughout their yards. Just try to start a company tomorrow that provides high bandwidth connections to peoples’ homes. See if you are allowed the right of way to lay your facilities throughout neighborhoods where not everyone is your customer.
Yet, the public gets nothing from these monopolies when it comes to the right of way
Sometime in the early sixties or seventies, this country began the move from benign Socialism toward full blown Communism. There will be no stone left unturned until the job is complete. Only until the US becomes a bland mud puddle from sea to sea will they be satisfied. It will take generations of our descendants to restore just what we had fifty years ago. Sorry to be so pessimistic during the season of hope, but hope is something in short supply this year.
So, the government wants to ensure “equal access” to the web, but at the same time gives the executive branch the ability to “switch off” websites at will? The truth: they’re using this seemingly-innocuous issue as an excuse to insert their tentacles into the Internet (the last segment of a free press).
Isn’t it interesting how industries in this country are dominated by threes…auto companies (the big 3), credit (Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion), broadband Internet (AT&T, Comcast and Verizon). The government favors three companies in a given industry so they can control the entire industry through their three corporate proxies. It also gives the illusion of competition.
Is anyone here aware of the smart grid?
“Is anyone here aware of the smart grid?” So, that’s why the electric company just replaced my electric meter, with a digital one; very sneaky of them.
[1] How to become a TELECOMMUNICATIONS EXPERT: (A) Have African ancestry and (B) Have a famous politically connected parent. Examples are – Michael Powell and (Filet) Mignon Clyburn. Of course, the latter is even more important than the former. Being the progeny of one of the OVERLORDS (like Liz Cheney) is worth at least subcabinet status. And then, of course, the revolving door between those government jobs and the lobbyist firms/”think tanks”/telecom-Vice-Presidencies dotting K Street and the like.
[2] I’m not sure that I have a dog in the fights between Verizon-Cox-Comcast-ATT “disservice providers” (Verizon knocked out some drywall 10 days ago and has yet to repair it / “conflict” – I have some shares of ATT from my mom) versus the I-tunes/Netflix etc. gang (which were put into business by the Hollywood/Washington copyright abusers). Your comment that laws (e.g. “regulations”) should be done by Congress and not the children of the Overlords is quite correct.
[3] Meanwhile, the Overlords and their Princesses keep expanding our “positive rights” – like medicine, internet, food, clothing, housing, “college education”… just like those guaranteed by the USSR and the dream of our #1 Fascist Delano:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Bill_of_Rights