Internet must not be regulated.
Posted on 02/26/2015 7:58:27 PM PST by Yardstick
The powers behind the FCC’s muscling of the Internet
Today’s vote by a bitterly divided Federal Communications Commission that the Internet should be regulated as a public utility is the culmination of a decade-long battle by the Left. Using money from George Soros and liberal foundations that totaled at least $196 million, radical activists finally succeeded in ramming through “net neutrality,” or the idea that all data should be transmitted equally over the Internet. The final push involved unprecedented political pressure exerted by the Obama White House on FCC chairman Tom Wheeler, head of an ostensibly independent regulatory body.
“Net neutrality’s goal is to empower the federal government to ration and apportion Internet bandwidth as it sees fit, and to thereby control the Internet’s content,” says Phil Kerpen, an anti-net-neutrality activist from the group American Commitment.
The courts have previously ruled the FCC’s efforts to impose “net neutrality” out of bounds, so the battle isn’t over. But for now, the FCC has granted itself enormous power to micromanage the largely unrestrained Internet.
Back in the 1990s, the Clinton administration teamed up with Internet pioneers to promote a hands-off approach to the new industry and keep it free from discriminatory taxation. Many still prefer that policy. Nicholas Negroponte, founder of the MIT Media Lab and the charity One Laptop Per Child, says that net neutrality “doesn’t make sense” because “the truth is, not all bits [of data] are created equal.”
Will Marshall, head of the Progressive Policy Institute (which was once a favorite think tank of Clinton Democrats), issued a statement that net neutrality “endorses a backward-looking policy that would apply the brakes to the most dynamic sector of America’s economy.”
But such voices have been drowned out by left-wing activists who want to manage the Internet to achieve their political objectives. The most influential of these congregate around the deceptively named Free Press, a liberal lobby co-founded in 2002 by Robert McChesney, a University of Illinois communications professor.
His goals have always been clear. “At the moment, the battle over network neutrality is not to completely eliminate the telephone and cable companies,” he told the website SocialistProject in 2009. “But the ultimate goal is to get rid of the media capitalists in the phone and cable companies and to divest them from control.” Earlier in 2000, he told the Marxist magazine Monthly Review: “Our job is to make media reform part of our broader struggle for democracy, social justice, and, dare we say it, socialism.” When I interviewed him in 2010, he admitted he is a socialist and said he was “hesitant to say I’m not a Marxist.”
In essence, what McChesney and his followers want is an Unfree Press — a media world that promotes their values. “To cast things in neo-Marxist terms that they could appreciate, they want to take control of the information means of production,” says Adam Therier of the blog TechLiberation.
Certainly McChesney seems blind to the dangers of media control on the left. In 2007, he co-authored a remarkable survey of the media under Hugo Chávez’s already clearly thuggish regime in Venezuela: “Aggressive, unqualified political dissent is alive and well in the Venezuelan mainstream media, in a manner few other democratic nations have ever known, including our own.”
Despite his astonishingly radical goals, McChesney’s Free Press group was able to leverage foundation cash and academic “research” into an influential force behind net neutrality. Julius Genachowski, President Obama’s first FCC chairman, hired Free Press’s Jen Howard as his press secretary. The FCC’s chief diversity officer, Mark Lloyd, has co-authored a Free Press report demanding regulation of political talk radio. The FCC’s National Broadband Plan cited research from Free Press and other left-wing groups backing net neutrality more than 50 times.
The battle for control of the Internet isn’t over. Over two-thirds of the House and Senate are on record as opposing FCC regulation of the Internet, and a new president could change the policy overnight in 2017 even if the courts don’t block it.
But for now, the “media reform” movement led by McChesney and his allies can claim bragging rights for their Saul Alinsky–style outflanking maneuver on Internet regulation. They financed the research behind the idea, installed their political allies in power, got the government to consider them experts on the issues they cared deeply about, and finally ran roughshod over both Congress and an initially reluctant FCC chairman. Conservatives should study how the Left won on this issue even as they acknowledge and fight the illegitimacy of many of the results.
— John Fund is national-affairs correspondent for NRO.
Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/414483/comrades-net-neutrality-john-fund
Part of the Marxist takeover scheme. One of the first items for our new, REAL American president to get rid of.
In 1917 terms, this is seizing the central telephone exchange and the railroad terminals.
They deserve full on warfare attack by the white hats now.
When do we get a new Real American president?
At least you understand what time it is.
The overwhelming vast majority of Americans are clueless.
Even most here on this board.
“net neutrality” - the very name is a lie. It’s “net conformity” or “net uniformity”
Net Neutrality is socialism/communism
Obama has no authority to pass net neutrality laws as his FCC just did
The FCC cannot pass laws . We must file lawsuits to put an immediate stop on these new FCC laws/rules
This marxist villain Barack Obama makes Chavez and Stalin look like boy scouts. This cretin is a pure evil liar hell bent on turning the USA into a socialist hell hole.
It’s amazing to me that many even on here blame valerie jaret, bureaucrats, Soros, Republicans , any one except the one who is causing all this evil namely Barack Obama. this Obama roach is the most evil villain the world has ever seen
Profile on Robert McChesney at DiscoverTheNetworks:
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=2227
This guy is a straight up Marxist. His organization, Free Press, is funded by Soros and the Ford Foundation to the tune of millions of dollars and has major influence within the FCC and the Obama administration.
I want to know if Judicial Watch has already filed a lawsuit against the FCC on this monstrous crime against America and freedom!@ I sure as hell wouldn’t want to be anywhere near Obama and his minions when the gates of hell open up and sweep them all in for eternity!
President Cruz will appoint a new FCC.
Internet must not be regulated.
The Left sound Way too Happy , something really stinks
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3261679/posts?page=1
We have Free Press cited as one of the three organizations that asked the commission to revise language last week, so they obviously knew what was in the report. How is this not a conspiracy. Now we find out the founder is a confirmed Socialist by his own admission and borderline Marxist. You would think our worthless congress would have already started with some subpoenas by now.
Even many one here until recently were arguing for net neutrality which as this article shows is just marxism/socialism/communism control of the Internet
even some on this forum don't know this happened or even what it is
They know the drill on this, and they don’t care. Right now they are grabbing the internet with intent to either muddy the waters, or outright ban anything they can that will assist a Democrat in 2016. Part of the plan laying the groundwork for Hillary.
But now it is to be ‘regulated’.
What we wish is immaterial and irrelevant.
The internet is now regulated.
Just like Healthcare is nationalized.
‘Must not’ will require that which few are even willing to contemplate - so ‘regulated’ it will be. Not a damn thing you can do about it either except to embrace the suck.
If you cower from the fight when it is easy then stay under the porch because it’s not going to get any easier and the last thing needed is nattering nabobs of negativity in the way.
Where are the bots that tell us we have nothing to worry about?
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