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.
Notable Quotes
Visit this page to view notable quotes regarding this issue from a variety of industry experts as well as well known news outlets and authorities.
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Google is no friend of Internet freedom
For the better part of a decade, companies like Google and IAC/InterActiveCorp have been pushing for the federal government to regulate the Internet in the name of net neutrality, and I’ve been fighting them every step of the way.
We beat them in Congress.
We beat them in the courts.
We beat them in public opinion.
But we lost to them on a 3-2 party line vote at the Federal Communications Commission, led by long-time IAC/InterActiveCorp general counsel turned FCC chairman Julius Genachowski. The FCC’s unlawful order gives that commission the self-appointed power to regulate how the broadband networks that comprise the Internet operate. (At least until courts again weigh in and stop them.)
SOPA/PIPA, Net Neutrality and the Good Guys and Bad Guys Against Both
By Seton Motley
BigGovernment.com
The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) (and its Senate alternative, the Protect Intellectual Property Act [PIPA]) have been taking a bipartisan beating. Conservatives have joined with Leftists to savage the bill and thus its chances for passage.
I too am opposed to this iteration of SOPA – it remains too overly broad.
But something similar and more finely, sharply crafted – must become law. And conservatives will need to reorient themselves when a better version of the bill comes along – and support it.
CES: FCC’s Genachowski Calls Net-Neutrality Lawsuit ‘Distracting’
Verizon Is Challenging Agency’s Authority to Impose Internet Regulations
Multichannel News
By Todd Spangler
Las Vegas — FCC chairman Julius Genachowski said Verizon Communications’ lawsuit challenging the agency’s network-neutrality regulations was “distracting” and could create uncertainty and confusion in the market.
Genachowski, in his third appearance at CES, primarily used the stage Wednesday to stump for his favorite issue — pushing TV broadcasters to auction off their spectrum to be used for wireless broadband.
On network neutrality, Genachowski said he was proud of the outcome, which he claimed has not hampered investment in broadband networks and applications.
Top 10 Worst Federal Rules of 2011
James Gattuso and Diane Katz
The Foundry Blog
Hindsight is supposed to be 20/20, but looking back on the past 12 months, it’s tough to see any sense in many of the Administration’s regulatory missteps. Of course, there are bound to be a few howlers when government churns out more than 3,500 rules in a year, including dozens unleashed by Obamacare, Dodd–Frank, and the perpetually errant Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). But by any standard, 2011 brought forth a remarkable number and variety of regulatory blunders.
FCC ‘reform’ could temper its bite
By Eliza Krigman
POLITICO
The campaign by congressional Republicans for “process reform” at the Federal Communications Commission is as much about lawmakers wanting to handcuff the commission as it is about how the agency operates.
A half-dozen Republicans who sit on the telecommunications subcommittees were quick to point out in recent interviews about the FCC the issues on which they think the commission has abused its mandate — net neutrality, the AT&T/T-Mobile deal and Universal Service Fund reform, to name just a few.
But rarely did the FCC’s processes come up. Only two lawmakers mentioned them, and one, House Communications and Technology Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden (R-Ore.), is the author of legislation to overhaul how the commission operates.
While it’s true that Walden’s proposal would make the FCC more transparent — preventing last-minute “data dumps” before controversial votes, for instance — the proposal also would undeniably make it a lot harder for the FCC to regulate the telecom industry.
New Year, New Shot to Eliminate Antiquated State Telecom Laws
Last year saw a slew of states review telecommunications laws designed for a bygone era. Tennessee phased out special charges for in-state long distance calls that subsidized phone companies. Florida and Kansas now allow companies subject to price regulations to better compete with new, less regulated providers.
Increased competition has resulted from convergence in the industry, as providers once broken into segregated markets (e.g., cable TV, local and long distance phone, wireless, etc.) now all offer similar broadband phone and video services, or at least a pipe to get them. However, state laws have been slow to change, regulating some legacy companies differently than new entrants, their competitors in the market.
Senate Rejects Resolution to Overturn Net Neutrality
Yesterday afternoon, the Senate voted to uphold the FCC’s Net Neutrality rules in a 52-46 party-line vote. The Senate Democrats’ neglect to uphold their branch’s power of legislating by allowing these legally dubious, bureaucratically crafted regulations to proceed shows just how little politicians are willing to stand up against job-killing and unnecessary regulations. Worse, the rules rely on legal footing that – if left unchecked – could be interpreted to permit the FCC to regulate virtually any aspect of the Internet ecosystem.
Fortunately, Net Neutrality faces a strong lawsuit, which represents a more likely attempt to halt their implementation. A suit filed by Verizon is being considered in the D.C. Court of Appeals — a court which has already thrown out the FCC’s case for Net Neutrality once before.
As of now, the Net Neutrality rules are set to go into effect on November 20.
Net Neutrality Proponents Pyrrhic Senate Victory
By Scott Cleland
Precursor Blog
The Senate’s 52-46 rejection of the Resolution of Disapproval of the FCC’s net neutrality regulations (after the House voted differently 240-179 to disapprove last spring), is a classic pyrrhic victory for net neutrality proponents in two big ways.
First, the issue put the FCC on the political radar screen of every Member of Congress, and not in a good way.
For several hours the Senate debated and then officially voted on whether the Constitutionally-authorized Congress should be the entity to effectively establish new Internet law, or whether unelected FCC commissioners with no direct statutory authority from Congress should be able to effectively establish new Internet law and effectively claim boundless unchecked regulatory power whenever they see fit.
Lawless Net Neutrality vs. the “Resolution of Disapproval”
By Wayne Crews
Forbes.com
Today, the U.S. Senate takes up S.J.Res.6, the FCC Internet and Broadband Resolution of Disapproval, for up to four hours of debate.
The controversy is over whether or not the Senate will vote to stop the Federal Communications Commission from doing what Congress never authorized it to do in the first place, namely, to implement its December 2010 order to regulate traffic control practices on the Internet.
The House already passed a resolution of disapproval back on tax day; back then Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) led much of the charge and kept the appropriate level of outrage over FCC’s power grab front and center.
We have Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX), Ranking Member of the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, to thank for pushing this disapproval resolution forward in the Senate. As Republican leader Sen. Mitch McConnell put it today, net neutrality “is an over-reaching attempt to ‘fix’ the Internet, when the Internet is not broken…According to the FCC’s own data, 93 percent of broadband subscribers are happy with their service.”
The Politics of Regulating the Internet
By Scott Cleland
PreCursorBlog.com
Net neutrality will be back in the news again as the U.S. Senate currently is scheduled to debate Wednesday and vote Thursday on whether to overturn the FCC’s Open Internet order, which preemptively regulated the Internet ostensibly to prevent broadband discrimination against websites, despite the fact that there is virtually no evidence of any broadband discrimination problem to solve.
Last spring the House voted 240-179 to overturn the FCC order. In the 2010 midterm elections, all 95 candidates that signed a pledge in support of net neutrality lost. Recently, Verizon and Metro PCS appealed the FCC order on the grounds the FCC does not have the statutory authority to regulate the Internet. They are likely to prevail, because the D.C. Appeals Court that is hearing the case ruled, in 2010 in an analogous case, that the FCC does not have unbounded authority to regulate broadband or the Internet.
The bizarre politics of this issue revolve around proponents’ desperate attempts to represent the FCC’s net neutrality regulations as something that they are not.
IFC Reply Comments to FCC: Title II Reclassification Unjustified, Unnecessary
Before the
Federal Communications Commission
Washington, D.C. 20554
In the Matter of Framework for Broadband Internet Service
GN Docket No. 10-127
FCC Docket No. 10-114
Reply Comments
of the Undersigned Members of the
INTERNET FREEDOM COALITION
Introduction
The Commission is being asked by Free Press and other organizations to pursue a radical course of action – reclassifying information services as telecommunications services in order to regulate the Internet for the first time. We write to urge the Commission to keep the Internet free of new government regulation and taxation and to refrain from rushing into such a potentially disastrous course of action.
Analysts are only beginning to grasp the extent of the disruptive and destructive consequences of regulating the Internet under Title II of the Communications Act, and the Commission is in no position to predict the outcome, much less assure Americans it will be positive. Americans have heard political leaders admit that we will not know the full extent or nature of massive health care and financial services regulations until after the underlying legislation has been passed. Now, Americans are facing the imposition of an even lesser-understood regulatory regime over the Internet without the benefit of any legislative process whatsoever.
IFC Supplemental Reply Comments: FCC Lacks Authority, Justification for Reclassifying Internet as Title II Service
Before the
Federal Communications Commission
Washington, D.C. 20554
In the Matter of
Preserving the Open Internet GN Docket No. 09-191
Broadband Industry Practices WC Docket No. 07-52
Supplemental Reply Comments of the Internet Freedom Coalition
Just two days prior to the Commission’s deadline for reply comments regarding the above Notice of Proposed Rulemakings, the U.S. Court of Appeals ruled in Comcast v. FCC that the Commission has no authority to enact Net Neutrality rules. The deadline for comments was extended, particularly to facilitate discussion of other methods of promulgating Net Neutrality regulations.
Beginning with comments on the National Broadband Plan filed by Public Knowledge in January, a small number of organizations have since proposed classifying the Internet as a Title II common carrier service as a way of asserting the Commission’s authority to enact Net Neutrality regulations. The Internet Freedom Coalition respectfully submits these reply comments in strong opposition to any effort to reclassify the Internet as a Title II service.
IFC Reply Comments to FCC: Refuting Free Press’ Arguments for Regulating the Internet
Before the
Federal Communications Commission
Washington, D.C. 20554
In the Matter of
Preserving the Open Internet GN Docket No. 09-191
Broadband Industry Practices WC Docket No. 07-52
Reply Comments of the Internet Freedom Coalition
The following comments are submitted by the undersigned members of the Internet Freedom Coalition. They are submitted in reply to comments filed by proponents of Network Neutrality regulations, and are attributable only to the signatories.
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.
