Liberals Mugged by Obamanet

Buyer’s remorse is already setting in for Google and other ‘net neutrality’ proponents

 By L. Gordon Crovitz of the WSJ. Excerpts:

"The Progressive Policy Institute said: “There is nothing progressive about the FCC backsliding to common carrier rules dating back to the 1930s.” The Internet Society, a net-neutrality advocate, said: “We are concerned with the FCC’s decision to base new rules for the modern Internet on decades-old telephone regulations designed for a very different technological era.” Former Clinton official Larry Irving wrote in the Hill: “Most of today’s proponents of a utility model for the Internet either have forgotten or never knew the genesis of the ‘regulatory restraint’ model that helped spur and continues to support Internet expansion.”"

"The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which supports applying the 1934 law to the Internet, nonetheless objects to a new regulation giving the FCC open-ended power to regulate the Internet. “A ‘general conduct rule,’ applied on a case-by-case basis,” the EFF wrote, “may lead to years of expensive litigation to determine the meaning of ‘harm’ (for those who can afford to engage in it).”

The general-conduct rule reportedly has seven standards, one of which is the “effect on free expression.” Net neutrality was supposed to ban online discrimination based on content. Instead, it is empowering the FCC—the agency that for decades enforced the “Fairness Doctrine” and that last year proposed studying “bias” in newsrooms—to chill speech."

"What if at the beginning of the Web, Washington had opted for Obamanet instead of the open Internet? Yellow Pages publishers could have invoked “harm” and “unjust and unreasonable” competition from online telephone directories."

"Among the first targets of the FCC’s “unjust and unreasonable” test are mobile-phone contracts that offer unlimited video or music. Netflix , the biggest lobbyist for utility regulation, could be regulated for how it uses encryption to deliver its content."