Biden’s internet power grab (Net Neutrality)

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Washington Times

The Federal Communications Commission will vote next week on “net neutrality” rules designed to give the feds even more leverage than they already do over online platforms.

If this sounds familiar, that’s because then-President Barack Obama implemented net neutrality in 2015 after an unprecedented lobbying effort from Big Tech. The scheme takes antique laws meant to oversee Ma Bell’s rotary telephones and applies them to modern online services.

 

Doing so makes no sense until you realize big companies have the advantage when it comes to cajoling Uncle Sam to interpret vague statutes in their favor. They almost succeeded when then-President Donald Trump’s FCC announced its intention to hang up on net neutrality in 2017. 

 

Big Tech went ballistic, orchestrating an “Internet Day of Action” as part of a relentless media campaign insisting internet freedom would disappear unless the hundreds of pages of federal red tape were kept in place. The FCC chairman at the time, Ajit Pai, was mercilessly mocked on late-night television.

Net-neutrality champions claimed that Americans would pay more for slower internet access, and that internet service providers would intentionally slow down traffic to disfavored websites. Mr. Pai stood his ground, and the results speak for themselves.

 

“None of the Apocalyptic predictions came to pass,” writes Brendan Carr, a Republican FCC commissioner. “Instead, Americans benefited from lower prices, faster speeds, increased competition, and accelerated Internet builds. The FCC’s latest set of claims fare no better than those trotted out back then.”

There’s a simple reason why the FCC shouldn’t regulate the internet: It has no legitimate legal authority to do so. If Congress wants to change that, elected lawmakers can pass a statute saying so, with a public record of the votes allowing accountability for the end result. This is how our government is supposed to work.

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Democrat FCC Majority Votes to Restore Obama-Era Net Neutrality Rules

The Democrat majority at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted on Thursday to restore the Obama-era net neutrality rules.

During President Donald Trump’s administration, then-Chairman Ajit Pai had repealed them.

 

Leftists have long sought to capture more regulatory authority over the internet using Title II regulations.

Essentially, net neutrality regulations seek to prohibit internet service providers (ISPs), such as Comcast and Verizon, from blocking, slowing down, or allowing for “paid prioritization,” by which users can pay for faster, more consistent service.

FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr told Breitbart News in an interview in April that net neutrality represents a leftist “power grab by the administrative state” and an “unlawful overreach.”

 

Allum Bokhari, a former Breitbart News reporter, explained:

The law of common carriage, mandated by the Title II regulations demanded by Democrats, is one of the solutions recommended by Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to address tech censorship. Yet Democrats want the rule applied to service providers, which are not in the habit of kicking off internet users for their political viewpoints, while not recommending similar regulations on the companies and platforms that are actually responsible for suppressing online discourse over the past five years — companies like Google, YouTube, Twitter/X, and Facebook.

Progressives and Democrats lost their minds when the FCC repealed Net Neutrality under Trump, predicting the end of the internet as we know it, and a variety of other disasters. As Breitbart News predicted at the time, none of these doom-laden predictions came true, and in fact broadband speeds across the country improved.