FCC Power Grab

When the FCC decided to approve net nuetrality by a partisan 3 to 2 vote, pushed by the White House, two things happened. The independence of the FCC was destroyed as Democrat Tom Wheeler carried the White House water and opened the door to the intensive intervention by the government of the Internet.

The Administration that promised that you could keep your current health plan and doctor, now may be the Administration that will promise to let you keep your Internet. From the time that Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak began Apple, the Internet has become one innovation after another. The Obama administration decided to abandon open innovation and now wants to regulate the Internet like the Ma Bell monopoly, for those of us who could remember those days.

The beauty of the Internet is that one doesn't need approval to launch new websites, apps, or mobile devices, but if the Obama reforms take place, these innovations will be slowed down. Interestingly enough, the one area there was a bipartisan consensus on was that the Internet shouldn’t be treated like a utility. Both parties were united from keeping the FCC from adding regulations and micromanaging the phone system. Now the Obama Administration (with the aid of FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler) rejected 20 years of bipartisanship and open innovation. Using the Communication Act of 1934, the regulation will give FCC staggering power and bureaucrats will determine what Internet charges and practices are unjust or unreasonable. Entrenched companies can use regulations to challenge new technologies, and creative destruction that has been a source of new technologies will disappear under armies of lawyers hired by those entrenched companies to lobby regulators.

Many Internet practices deliver values to present day consumers, including Amazon partnering with Sprint to enable uploads, which competing e-book sellers claim as being unjust. Facebook and Netflix may find themselves victims of other companies’ objections. We are told repeatedly about the need for bipartisanship, well, this is the issue where that bipartisanship is needed as Obama has broken the consensus about the Internet.