Free Republic

The media silence was deafening on Friday as the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) launched “Net Neutrality” regulations–possibly the most far-reaching and intrusive regulatory action of the 21st century. When Breitbart News published “Everybody Equal, But Google Much More Equal” in February, revealing how the FCC’s Democratic majority gave Google the “heads up” on the secret regulations and allowed executives to tweak the deal, there was a huge uproar. But now that the Internet is under the FCC’s “Ministry of Innovation,” the media seem to have moved on. As Seton Motley noted at RedState, there was no mention in the tech...

Documents and copies of communications obtained by The Daily Caller indicate that the Federal Communications Commission propped up broadband company LightSquared with favorable regulatory decisions and other special treatment, while driving its competition out of business. In August 2008, Wall Street hedge fund Harbinger Capital Partners, owned by longtime Democratic political donor Philip Falcone, sought to buy a majority stake in the satellite company SkyTerra — the company that would later become LightSquared. On June 27 of that year, just before Falcone’s Harbinger Capital sought FCC approval for that purchase, Falcone donated $28,500 to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. But...

Federal Communications Commissioner Michael Copps made a case for a government hand in media policy in a speech to the FCBA on Tuesday. "The commission can act now. It should have acted on the media before now. I am disappointed that it has not," he said. The decline of "real journalism" justifies federal involvement, according to Copps. "The news is suffering from a bad case of substance abuse," he said. The Democratic commissioner pointed to Fox News' Bernie Goldberg and Bill O'Reilly as examples of the problem with today's media landscape,

Tomorrow morning the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will mark the winter solstice by taking an unprecedented step to expand government's reach into the Internet by attempting to regulate its inner workings. In doing so, the agency will circumvent Congress and disregard a recent court ruling. How did the FCC get here? For years, proponents of so-called "net neutrality" have been calling for strong regulation of broadband "on-ramps" to the Internet, like those provided by your local cable or phone companies. Rules are needed, the argument goes, to ensure that the Internet remains open and free, and to discourage broadband providers

So is the Federal Communications Commission really going to place common carrier restrictions on Internet service providers? Well, yes, but not too many of them. FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski Friday said he would move to reclassify ISPs as common carriers, while at the same time insisting that ISPs be exempt from the vast majority of regulations in the current common carrier rules.