Regulating The Internet, One Way Or The Other

by Lori Drummer - April 9th, 2010 - Big Government

According to Tuesday’s unanimous court ruling, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is not above the law – no matter what Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski or his Leftist friends at Free Press might wish.

For the past several years, the Left has breathlessly claimed that without the imposition of government oversight and control, the Internet as we know it will cease to exist.

Just try and follow the Left’s logic for a moment. The Internet – whose ingenious development and explosive growth has occurred almost entirely free from the heavy hand of the government – will cease to exist as we know it without the heavy hand of government?

This week’s ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit clearly states that the FCC does not have the authority to impose network neutrality rules on Internet service providers. Indeed, the FCC “failed to tie its assertion” that any law gives the Commission regulatory authority to oversee Internet providers’ network management practices.

That’s right: no law exists that gives the FCC the authority to regulate Internet service providers. It’s not that the FCC just misinterpreted their authority – they unilaterally asserted authority where none existed.

So, what’s this Obama FCC likely to do now? Well, forge ahead anyway, of course!

Instead of suspending their network neutrality rulemaking proceeding, the FCC has extended the comment period for the proceeding (from April 8 to April 26), seeking creative ideas on how they can legally assert their authority to regulate the Internet.

This war for control of the Internet provides greater insight into the tyrannical instincts of Barack Obama and his regime than most issues can provide. It is absolutely asinine to pretend that the highly competitive and unregulated world of the Internet has not driven innovation and service improvements at a nearly unbelievable rate. Yet regulatory control is Obama's knee jerk reaction to an Internet Service Provider trying to assure high performance by restricting the excessive band width requirements of one type of service. The immediate reaction is that the provider must ask permission of a bureaucrat to make such decisions.

Why? Because in this case the service being constrained is represented by a large contributor to Democrat causes of course.

If our nation permits that regulatory control to Obama - I guarantee that decisions will be made not based on what is best for Internet consumers but what is politically best for the Democrat Party.

Bet on it.