Look up "Cass Sunstein"; he's the one who made the most egregious comments.
He later dialed them down as being politically inviable and almost certainly unconstitutional (right on both counts), but when people on the Left makes comments like this (and he's not the only offender), it definitely gives credence to the concerns of those on the Right.
This article misses the point of the debate, and completely mischaracterizes the reasons why the Right is concerned about the current net neutrality power grab. There are several issues here, which the Daily Kos completely glosses over (which, being the Daily Kos, doesn't surprise me much):
1. The power grab by the FCC is illegal and has already been repudiated in court. The 111th Congress did not implement net neutrality rules (despite a slight push for them by the Obama administration) and so the FCC decided they would just create the regulations out of the blue. The problem is that a federal court shut that down, stating in a decision that the FCC didn't have the authority to regulate the Internet. So, the new stunt is to reclassify the Internet such that it falls under FCC jurisdiction (under a 1930s law designed to regulate monopoly telephone services). This will probably get thrown out in court, but the Right is correct to point out that this is a violation of the rule of law.
2. The argument about blocking political speech is not really part of the issue (asinine comments about Rush Limbaugh notwithstanding). No service provider can block out half of the political speech on the Internet (for either side) and stay in business, so proposing net neutrality as a solution to this non-problem is, well, a solution looking for a problem. We haven't had market failure in this area.
3. Government is notoriously slow and inept at regulating emerging and ever-changing technologies. How many articles have you read on Slashdot that underscore this fact? Laws are static, and the democratic process is reasonably slow (by design) to get things done. Therefore, regulating a fast-changing space is likely to cause more harm than good. This particular administration is likely to cause even more spectacular damage, given its record of accepting only "expert" opinions that line up with its preconceived notions (consensus by tautology) -- see, for instance, the EPA's behavior during the Gulf spill -- and so it's pretty likely that whatever it churns out will be particularly damaging. This doesn't even cover the fact that the FCC isn't going to make the rules public until they're already final. If you want to discourage investment in this market, that's a great way to do it. No wonder unemployment is still 9.8%.
4. Americans are impatient by nature; if companies foolishly and needlessly throttle services that people really want, they'll just drop the company. The only thing that somewhat prevents this is....wait for it, the FCC, which has allowed and encouraged telecoms to have a monopoly within a municipality, which means less competition for consumers. So, this law is government regulation designed to combat the result of a separate government failure.
Slashdot Mirror
Look up "Cass Sunstein"; he's the one who made the most egregious comments.
He later dialed them down as being politically inviable and almost certainly unconstitutional (right on both counts), but when people on the Left makes comments like this (and he's not the only offender), it definitely gives credence to the concerns of those on the Right.
This article misses the point of the debate, and completely mischaracterizes the reasons why the Right is concerned about the current net neutrality power grab. There are several issues here, which the Daily Kos completely glosses over (which, being the Daily Kos, doesn't surprise me much):
1. The power grab by the FCC is illegal and has already been repudiated in court. The 111th Congress did not implement net neutrality rules (despite a slight push for them by the Obama administration) and so the FCC decided they would just create the regulations out of the blue. The problem is that a federal court shut that down, stating in a decision that the FCC didn't have the authority to regulate the Internet. So, the new stunt is to reclassify the Internet such that it falls under FCC jurisdiction (under a 1930s law designed to regulate monopoly telephone services). This will probably get thrown out in court, but the Right is correct to point out that this is a violation of the rule of law.
2. The argument about blocking political speech is not really part of the issue (asinine comments about Rush Limbaugh notwithstanding). No service provider can block out half of the political speech on the Internet (for either side) and stay in business, so proposing net neutrality as a solution to this non-problem is, well, a solution looking for a problem. We haven't had market failure in this area.
3. Government is notoriously slow and inept at regulating emerging and ever-changing technologies. How many articles have you read on Slashdot that underscore this fact? Laws are static, and the democratic process is reasonably slow (by design) to get things done. Therefore, regulating a fast-changing space is likely to cause more harm than good. This particular administration is likely to cause even more spectacular damage, given its record of accepting only "expert" opinions that line up with its preconceived notions (consensus by tautology) -- see, for instance, the EPA's behavior during the Gulf spill -- and so it's pretty likely that whatever it churns out will be particularly damaging. This doesn't even cover the fact that the FCC isn't going to make the rules public until they're already final. If you want to discourage investment in this market, that's a great way to do it. No wonder unemployment is still 9.8%.
4. Americans are impatient by nature; if companies foolishly and needlessly throttle services that people really want, they'll just drop the company. The only thing that somewhat prevents this is....wait for it, the FCC, which has allowed and encouraged telecoms to have a monopoly within a municipality, which means less competition for consumers. So, this law is government regulation designed to combat the result of a separate government failure.