There is no doubt in my mind that Google/YouTube will censor this video. Watch it while you can!

Net Neutrality

Ryan Singal reports at Wired about the Net Neutrality changes. Every time I think I understand the issues, I read something that causes me to doubt myself. This is one of those times.

Are you confused about the proposed changes to "Net Neutrality?"

At Bloomberg, Megan McArdle writes about the proposed changes to "Net Neutrality."

The Internet Had Already Lost Its Neutrality

Even while the FCC was more strictly regulating, a few powerful companies took control of what we see and don't.

Under the Obama administration, the FCC looked to write regulations that would limit the ability of internet service providers to play favorites with certain services on their network. The administration was haunted by the specter of ISPs blocking political content, accepting payments from big content providers like Netflix to prioritize their services (thus making it difficult-to-impossible for upstarts to compete), and otherwise turning the internet into a closed garden rather than the open frontier its architects envisioned.

Unfortunately, the FCC ran into a problem: Courts kept telling the commission that it didn’t have the legal authority to force ISPs to keep their networks equally open to all comers. So a couple years ago, the FCC moved to reclassify ISPs as “common carriers” under Title II of the Communications Act of 1934. That offered much more scope for regulation, and finally allowed the FCC to realize the dreams of internet activists everywhere.

Too much scope for regulation, said critics -- including Ajit Pai, then a commissioner, and now the chairman of the FCC. Pai wrote a blistering dissent to the FCC’s decision, summing up the major problem with the FCC’s move: It forced ISPs into an 80-year-old framework designed for the telephone monopolies of a much different era. Those regulations were more concerned about things like controlling market power than, say, promoting innovation. And while the advocates for net neutrality stressed the benefits for competition among content providers, the critics asked what would happen to competition among ISPs, since heavy-handed regulation often acts as a barrier to entry for new startups, which can’t afford to negotiate the regulatory apparatus.

Those of us old enough to remember the telephone service looked like in the 1970s, before the FCC unwound a little -- which is to say, pretty much like the service our parents had when they were children, down to the astronomical prices for long distance calls, and the chunky plastic rotary telephones -- can see why critics were concerned about giving the FCC that kind of power to block innovation. No problem, retorted advocates: The FCC just won’t use much of its regulatory power. The technical term is “forbearance,” and the FCC offered to do a lot of it when it brought ISPs under Title II, for example by forgoing its statutory authority to set rates.

But offering not to use the power is not the same thing as not having it. A future commission might change its mind, and in the meantime ISPs would have to plan their investments accordingly -- knowing that the revenue they’d counted on to make some new project pay off might vanish at the stroke of a commissioner’s pen. That kind of regulatory uncertainty does not generally foster innovation, or for that matter, sound business decisions.

Unsurprising, then, that under Pai, the commission quickly announced a proposal to roll back the Obama-era innovations. A contentious public comment period followed, but today, the FCC announced the final word: Tier II regulation of ISPs is going away, and the net neutrality rules with it.

The internet will be filled today with denunciations of this move, threats of a dark future in which our access to content will be controlled by a few powerful companies. And sure, that may happen. But in fact, it may already have happened, led not by ISPs, but by the very companies that were fighting so hard for net neutrality.

Consider what happened to the Daily Stormer, the neo-Nazi publication, after Charlottesville. One by one, hosting companies refused to permit its content on their servers. The group was forced to effectively flee the country, and then other countries, too, shut it down.

Now of course, these are not nice people. Their website espoused vile hate. But the fact remains that what they were publishing was not illegal, merely immoral, and their immoral speech was effectively shut down by a small number of private companies who decided to exercise their considerable control over what we’re allowed to read. And what is to stop them from expanding this decision to other categories, forcing the rest of us to conform to Silicon Valley’s idea of what it is moral and right for us to see?

Fifteen years ago, when I started blogging, it was common to hear that “the internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.” You don’t hear that so often anymore, because it’s not true. China has proven very effective at censoring the internet, and as market power has consolidated in the tech industry, so have private firms.

Meanwhile, our experience of the internet is increasingly controlled by a handful of firms, most especially Google and Facebook. The argument for regulating these companies as public utilities is arguably at least as strong as the argument for thus regulating ISPs, and very possibly much stronger; while cable monopolies may have local dominance, none of them has the ability that Google and Facebook have to unilaterally shape what Americans see, hear, and read.

In other words, we already live in the walled garden that activists worry about, and the walls are getting higher every day. Is this a problem? I think it is. But that doesn’t mean that the internet would get better if Google and Facebook and Apple and Amazon were required to make every decision with a regulator hanging over their shoulder to decide whether it was sufficiently “neutral.”

The fact that these firms were able to cement their power at the moment when regulators were most focused on keeping the internet open tells you just how difficult it is to get that sort of regulation right; while you are looking hard at one danger, an equally large one may be creeping up just outside the range of your peripheral vision. Indeed, you may be making one problem bigger while trying to solve another. We may indeed be facing a future of less choice and less consumer power. But this decision is unlikely to be what brings us there.

What do you know about Net Neutrality?

Larry Alton hopes Net Neutrality will be Trump's next target for regulatory reform. He gives his reasons at the American Interest.

Once again Texas Senator Ted Cruz is out in front, trying to wake us up.

Thanks to Adrienne's Corner

Rush explains Net Neutrality

Because he loves freedom, Rush Limbaugh tries valiantly to warn people about what Net Neutrality is really about. Go here to read his remarks.

Who bankrolled today's successful takeover of the internet?

Now they tell us who is behind Net Neutrality: George Soros! Yes, it passed today, and today the Washington Examiner has a story by Paul Bedard saying that the Soros group Open Society Foundations, along with the Ford Foundation, have given over $196 million to pro Net Neutrality groups.

Some of those supported by the two groups’ funding have also worked the White House, notably John Podesta, former Center for American Progress head and now expected to run Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.

Read more here.

ObamaNet: A solution desperately seeking a problem

Deroy Murdoch writes:

If you like Obamacare, you will love ObamaNet.

... “For the first time, billions of dollars in fees will be attached to the Internet service, just like they are to telephone service,” warns Senator Mike Lee (R., Utah). ISPs then would “pass them on to you, the consumer.”

...Is any American so inclined unable to go online? Cheap computers with built-in browsers grant instant access to the Internet’s treasures. If one cannot buy an Internet-capable computer or smartphone, federally subsidized libraries offer free gateways to Amazon, eBay, Hotmail, Wikipedia, YouTube, and virtually every recorded example of human wisdom and folly via Google.

ObamaNet is a monstrous “solution” desperately seeking a problem. ObamaNet is as urgently needed as a fire engine at the base of Niagara Falls, poised to battle any blaze that might erupt.

The Internet is not broken. Obama should not “fix” it.

Read more here.

Net Neutrality = monopolistic control

Agit Pai is the sole Republican member of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Mr. Pai

inferred in a Tweet that President Barack Obama’s secret, 332-page “Net Neutrality” document is a scheme for federal micro-managing of the Internet to extract billions in new taxes from consumers and again enforce progressives’ idea of honest, equitable, and balanced content fairness.

Chriss W. Street writes,

If the Internet economy was a country, it would rank fifth, behind only the U.S., China, Japan, and India. Economic activity on the Internet totals $4.2 trillion, and almost half of the earth’s 7 billion people are already connected to the Web.

...Pai also released a statement: “President Obama’s plan marks a monumental shift toward government control of the Internet. It gives the FCC the power to micromanage virtually every aspect of how the Internet works,” he said. “The plan explicitly opens the door to billions of dollars in new taxes on broadband… These new taxes will mean higher prices for consumers and more hidden fees that they have to pay.”

Pai had previously observed that he was concerned about the plan would hinder broadband investment, slow network speed and expansion, limit outgrowth to rural areas of the country, and reduce Internet service provider (ISP) competition.

Read more here.