Posted on 02/28/2015 1:09:44 PM PST by Republican Wildcat
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has pulled the trigger. In the name of “net neutrality” they have decided to assert regulatory control over the vast, sprawling, ever-changing conglomeration of economic activities known simply as the “Internet.” What will the FCC do now? Think of Nancy Pelosi’s infamous statement about the Affordable Care Act: Congress had to pass it for Americans to learn what it would do.
The FCC has bitten off more than it can chew. Its task will be somewhat comparable to that of the old Soviet price-setting bureaucracy in which my friend, economist Yuri Maltsev, once worked. Barely 325 bureaucrats were in charge of setting over 23 million prices—an overwhelmingly complex task that truly was “mission impossible.” The FCC is larger (1,720 employees according to their website) but the Internet, already used by two or three hundred million Americans in trillions of actions a day with new activities and uses continually being discovered is far beyond the capacity of a couple thousand regulators to manage.
FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler at yesterday's vote on net neutrality. (Credit: MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images) FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler at yesterday’s vote on net neutrality. (Credit: MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images)
Sooner or later, under FCC regulation of the Internet, there will be “regulatory capture”—large established firms exploiting regulations to suppress the emergence of small, creative startups. Because it will be impossible for the FCC to keep close tabs on thousands of Internet companies, they will find it expedient to limit the number of participants, finding it easier to oversee a few large corporations than countless smaller ones.
Think of the investment implications here: Who knows how many would-be startups that might have become the next Facebook or Twitter may be strangled in their cribs by FCC regulators?
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
Well, the fun part of it is this: Recall how many people howled over SOPA? Well, Net Neutrality is for the most part SOPA with a different mask on it.
And all they did was fiddle with wording, fiddle with some add ons, and miraculously due to the word games a bunch of people who were against SOPA were suddenly for “Net Neutrality” even though they have no idea what it is.
Bump
I think the most significant part of this is that the folks screaming for NN who have no more read the regulations than anyone else (as they have not been revealed) are making far-reaching predictions that the government will or will not “ever” do this or that. This is simply unknowable. But the precedent is hereby set that at some point, “fairness” can and will be used for some lever that inevitably will be used to secure some connected somebody what they perceive as an unfair advantage. This is the nature of government regulation in the 21st century. The fact of the matter is that nobody can predict the future; however the folks who have clamored for more and more government regulation have been astoundingly wrong in the quality and accuracy of their predictions...0bamacare being the most glaring example.
Whatever they clamor for is sold as being “fair”’ but “fairness” is a state achieved by those with the most influence to legislators via contributions (aka bribes) and to think that new startups would have such influence is the height of naivete.
Achieving their “stated goals” could have been fully covered in a simple 3 to 5 page document. What’s in the other 300+ pages?
The pushback will be overwhelming.
It won’t be direct, but rather ignoring what the FCC does and working around it when something the FCC does gets in the way.
They will be like a small man standing with his hand out against the tide.
But they will be an annoyance for quote some time...
This article misses the entire point. Net neutrality has nothing to do with economic activity and the FCC will likely do very little to monitor, much less control, prices. This is all about control of the political speech of anyone who dare criticize the Left. George Soros did not spend 150 million dollars to make sure that the American people could get cheap Netflix downloads. He and others of his ilk can’t stand the fact that they don’t control speech on the Internet the way that they do in the media and on college campuses.
Soon, you will have to pay $300 for an web site license and register with the Federal Government. Anyone objecting to the “hateful” content of your blog can file a complaint with the FCC and you will be shut down until an investigation can be completed. Investigations will take years.
It’s started .... an email I received:
Dear AT&T High Speed Internet Customer,
We hope you are enjoying your AT&T High Speed Internet service.
We want to let you know that starting with your April 2015 bill1, the monthly rate for your AT&T High Speed Internet FastAccess® DSL Ultra 1.5 plan2 will increase $3.00 to $42.00 per month.
Is that for a business or personal? Just wondering
I think you’re missing the main point. It is not manageable to do that. You really wouldn’t be able to enforce it.
If I have a computer online I can serve content. How can they stop me? If everyone just refused to pay a license they wouldn’t be able to do much about it. How will they physically shut me down? If they really think that they can stop speech they disagree with they’re grossly mistaken.
I can’t see that this won’t be challenged anyway. The Internet is just a bunch of private companies (mainly) joining their networks together. The government doesn’t own it. This intruding on private companies and telling them what they can and can’t do with their own packet routing. It’s ridiculous.
Do you know how an ISP works? Upon notification from the FCC, your ISP will block your IP address and your account will be terminated. Your name will be on a list that will prevent you getting an account on another ISP.
Google the Great Firewall of China. Watch your Netflix while you can.
It usually turns out bad when someone has themself convinced they can do ___ but they have absolutely NO idea whatsoever what they’re trying to do and haven’t the first clue how to go about it. It’s usually fun to watch their inevitable self-destruction...from a distance.
Personal
The FCC is hardly a charitable organization, and this administration never does anything that is not for it’s own benefit, so who is it that’s going to be making lots of money on the new regulations?
I did think of the same thing - difficult to understand the rightful opposition to SOPA and outrage over the same, and a yawn, or even outright support, if this action by the FCC simply because it is named “net neutrality.”
if = of
My ISP has multiple tiers of bandwidth at different prices. Does “net neutrality” mean that they can only deliver one bandwidth to consumers at one price?
Exactly. Precisely what it’s all about. Good post.
The fact that Google read the legislation and approved it, before Congress, the public or its competitors could review it, is a good enough reason to chunk the whole regulation and sic the anti-trust division on Google.
I can imagine anti-obscenity laws used to shut down “hate speech” filled blogs, such as discussing why affirmative action is not working or why race-based preferences for blacks and Hispanics are unfair to Asians and whites.
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