{"id":25841,"date":"2014-05-19T10:51:20","date_gmt":"2014-05-19T15:51:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=25841"},"modified":"2014-05-19T10:51:20","modified_gmt":"2014-05-19T15:51:20","slug":"gillespie-dont-let-the-fcc-ruin-the-internet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2014\/05\/19\/gillespie-dont-let-the-fcc-ruin-the-internet\/","title":{"rendered":"Gillespie &#8211; Don&#8217;t let the FCC ruin the internet!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.thedailybeast.com\/articles\/2014\/05\/19\/the-fcc-must-ignore-the-silly-net-neutrality-advocates.html\" target=\"_blank\">Nick Gillespie<\/a> thinks that the uproar about net neutrality may end up with the worst of all possible solutions by letting the FCC control the internet:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Reports of the imminent death of the Internet\u2019s freewheeling ways and utopian possibilities are more wildly exaggerated and full of spam than those emails from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nigerianspam.com\/MRS%20MOBUTU%20SESE-SEKO.htm\" target=\"_blank\">Mrs. Mobotu Sese-Seko<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>In fact, the real problem isn\u2019t that the FCC hasn\u2019t shown the cyber-cojones to regulate ISPs like an old-school telephone company or \u201ccommon carrier,\u201d but that it\u2019s trying to increase its regulatory control of the Internet in the first place.<\/p>\n<p>Under the proposal currently in play, the FCC assumes an increased ability to review ISP offerings on a \u201ccase-by-case basis\u201d and kill any plan it doesn\u2019t believe is \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.pcworld.com\/article\/2155720\/fcc-moves-forward-with-controversial-net-neutrality-proposal.html\" target=\"_blank\">commercially reasonable<\/a>.\u201d Goodbye fast-moving innovation and adjustment to changing technology on the part of companies, hello regulatory morass and long, drawn-out bureaucratic hassles.<\/p>\n<p>In 1998, the FCC told Congress that the Internet should properly be understood as an \u201cinformation service,\u201d which allows for a relatively low level of government interference, rather than as a \u201ctelecommunication service,\u201d which could subject it to the sort of oversight that public utilities get (as my <em>Reason<\/em> colleague Peter Suderman <a href=\"http:\/\/reason.com\/blog\/2014\/05\/15\/is-the-internet-a-public-utility\" target=\"_blank\">explains<\/a>, there\u2019s every reason to keep that original classification). The Internet has flourished in the absence of major FCC regulation, and there\u2019s no demonstrated reason to change that now. That\u2019s exactly why the parade of horribles \u2014 non-favored video streams slowed to an unwatchable trickle! whole sites blocked! plucky new startups throttled in the crib! \u2014 trotted out by net neutrality proponents is hypothetical in a world without legally mandated net neutrality.<\/p>\n<p>Apart from addressing a problem that doesn\u2019t yet exist, if you are going to pin your hopes for free expression and constant innovation on a government agency, the FCC is about the last place to start. For God\u2019s sake, we\u2019re talking about the agency that spent <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thedailybeast.com\/articles\/2014\/02\/01\/super-bowl-s-nipplegate-fiasco-10-years-later-the-pop-diva-the-boob-and-the-outrage.html\" target=\"_blank\">the better part of a decade<\/a> trying to figuratively cover up Janet Jackson\u2019s tit by fining Viacom and CBS for airing the 2004 Super Bowl.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Nick Gillespie thinks that the uproar about net neutrality may end up with the worst of all possible solutions by letting the FCC control the internet: Reports of the imminent death of the Internet\u2019s freewheeling ways and utopian possibilities are more wildly exaggerated and full of spam than those emails from Mrs. Mobotu Sese-Seko. In [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,831,84,10,28],"tags":[459,58,661,483],"class_list":["post-25841","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bureaucracy","category-business","category-government","category-liberty","category-media","tag-censorship","tag-internet","tag-regulation","tag-superbowl"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-6IN","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25841","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25841"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25841\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25842,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25841\/revisions\/25842"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25841"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25841"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25841"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}