Tuesday, November 11, 2014

You’d think the man who couldn’t launch a website with a billion dollars in funding might be a little more circumspect about trying to seize control of the Internet


◼ PRESIDENT OBAMA CALLS FOR EXPANDED INTERNET REGULATION - John Hayward/Human Events @Doc_o

You’d think the man who couldn’t launch a website with a billion dollars in funding might be a little more circumspect about trying to seize control of the Internet, but no, there was Barack Obama on Monday, lecturing the supposedly independent FCC on the need to turn cyberspace into a highly-regulated public utility, using an archaic title designed for telecommunications from the rotary-dial era. ◼ The Washington Post reports:
President Obama on Monday called for the government to aggressively regulate Internet service providers such as Verizon and Comcast, treating broadband like a public utility as essential as water, phone service and electricity.
Yes, let’s allow the inept, corrupt government that has given you one titanic faceplant after the other to nationalize Internet access. What could go wrong?

...If your hackles go up at the notion of the Leviathan State ensuring Internet “freedom” through ham-fisted regulation, good: you’re thinking straight....

There are reasonable cases to be made for government regulation, and of course the industry isn’t exactly unregulated now. But using archaic laws to set up a massive new regulatory regime is just too much. It might begin with four proposals that sound good to many ears, but it surely will not end there. I counsel skepticism towards the regulators at least as deep as the cynicism we feel toward their targets. No matter what objections we might raise to their business practices, those companies will always easier to bring to heel than Big Government is.

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