Gordon Crovitz writing in today's WSJ
* * *
Critics of President Obama’s “net neutrality” plan call
it ObamaCare for the Internet.
That’s unfair to ObamaCare.
Both ObamaCare and “ObamaNet” submit huge industries to
complex regulations. Their supporters say the new rules had to be passed before
anyone could read them. But at least ObamaCare claimed it would solve
long-standing problems.
(*PAUSE*)
ObamaNet promises to fix an Internet that isn’t broken.
(*DEAFENING SILENCE*)
The permissionless Internet, which allows anyone to
introduce a website, app or device without government review, ends this week.
On Thursday the three Democrats among the five
commissioners on the Federal Communications Commission will vote to regulate
the Internet under rules written for monopoly utilities.
(*PURSED LIPS*)
No one, including the bullied FCC chairman, Tom Wheeler,
thought the agency would go this far.
The big politicization came when President Obama in
November demanded that the supposedly independent FCC apply the agency’s most
extreme regulation to the Internet.
(A recent page-one Wall Street Journal story headlined
“Net Neutrality: How White House Thwarted FCC Chief” documented “an unusual,
secretive effort inside the White House . . . acting as a parallel version of
the FCC itself.”)
Congress is demanding details of this interference.
* SCREW "DETAILS." STOP IT! CONGRESS MUST STOP
OBAMA!
In the early 1980s, a congressional investigation blasted
President Reagan for telling his FCC chairman his view of regulations about
television reruns. “I believe it is imperative for the integrity of all
regulatory processes that the president unequivocally declare that he will
express no view in the matter and that he will do nothing to intervene in the
work of the FCC,” said Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a New York Democrat.
* FRANKLY I DISAGREE. I HAD NO PROBLEM WITH PRESIDENT
REAGAN "SHARING HIS VIEWS" AND I HAVE NO PROBLEM WITH PRESIDENT OBAMA
DOING LIKEWISE. BUT "SHARING ONE'S VIEWS" IS WHERE IT MUST STOP! ONLY
CONGRESS HAS THE POWER TO PUT THE INTERNET UNDER REGULATORY REGIME - AND AS FAR
AS I'M AWARE THEY HAVEN'T DONE SO!
* NEITHER THE AGENCY NOR THE "CHIEF EXECUTIVE"
HAVE THIS UNILATERAL POWER!
Mr. Obama’s role raises legal as well as political
questions. Those harmed by the new rules could argue in court that political
pressure made the agency’s actions “arbitrary and capricious.”
The more than 300 pages of new regulations are secret...
* THIS IS INSANE...!!! FOLKS... THINK ABOUT WHAT YOU'RE
READING...!!! THIS IS INSANE; THIS IS NOT AMERICA...!!!
...but Mr. Wheeler says they will subject the Internet to
the key provisions of Title II of the Communications Act of 1934, under which
the FCC oversaw Ma Bell.
Title II authorizes the commission to decide what
“charges” and “practices” are “just and reasonable” — an enormous amount of
discretion. Former FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell has found 290 federal
appeals court opinions on this section and more than 1,700 FCC administrative
interpretations.
Defenders of the Obama plan claim that there will be
regulatory “forbearance,” though not from the just-and-reasonable test. They
also promise not to regulate prices, a pledge that Republican FCC Commissioner
Ajit Pai has called “flat-out false.” He added: “The only limit on the FCC’s
discretion to regulate rates is its own determination of whether rates are
‘just and reasonable,’ which isn’t much of a restriction at all.”
* FOLKS... THESE IDIOTS ARE GOING TO DESTROY THE
INTERNET!
The Supreme Court has ruled that if the FCC applies Title
II to the Internet, all uses of telecommunications will have to pass the “just
and reasonable” test. Bureaucrats can review the fairness of Google’s search
results, Facebook’s news feeds and news sites’ links to one another and to
advertisers.
(BlackBerry is already lobbying the FCC to force Apple
and Netflix to offer apps for BlackBerry’s unpopular phones.)
Bureaucrats will oversee peering, content-delivery
networks and other parts of the interconnected network that enables everything
from Netflix and YouTube to security drones and online surgery.
Supporters of ObamaNet describe it as a counter to the
broadband duopoly of cable and telecom companies. In reality, it gives
duopolists another tool to block competition.
* THAT'S SURE HOW IT SOUNDS TO ME... BUT I'M THROWING IT
OUT TO FRIENDS WHO KNOW MORE THAN I DO... WHAT DO YOU FOLKS HAVE TO SAY?
Utility regulations let dominant companies complain that
innovations from upstarts fail the “just and reasonable” test — as truly
disruptive innovations often do.
AT&T has decades of experience leveraging FCC
regulations to stop competition. Last week AT&T announced a high-speed
broadband plan that charges an extra $29 a month to people who don’t want to be
tracked for online advertising. New competitor Google Fiber can offer low-cost
broadband only because it also earns revenues from online advertising. In other
words, AT&T has already built a case against Google Fiber that Google’s
cross-subsidization from advertising is not “just and reasonable.”
Utility regulation was designed to maintain the status
quo - and it succeeds. This is why the railroads, Ma Bell and the local water
monopoly were never known for innovation. The Internet was different because
its technologies, business models and creativity were permissionless.
This week Mr. Obama’s bureaucrats will give him the
regulated Internet he demands.
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