Conn Carroll
Washington Examiner
6/2/2011
Documents made public yesterday by Judicial Watch describe extensive collusion by Federal Communications Commission officials with a left-wing advocacy group in a campaign to expand government regulation of the Internet.
The documents, obtained by Judicial Watch in a December 2010 Freedom of Information Act request, were created after Democrat appointees solidified their 3-2 control of the agency in March 2009.
Judicial Watch is a conservative nonprofit that specializes in using the FOIA and other avenues to expose corruption in government.
The coordination between FCC officials and Free Press, the advocacy group, was on behalf of a proposal that the agency assert authority to regulate access to the Internet as if it were a public utility in the interest of insuring “Net Neutrality.”
Proponents said doing so would assure equal access for all Internet users by barring companies from offering preferred rates for higher delivery speeds. Other users, especially in communities with limited Internet access, would be forced to accept poorer service.
But critics said the proposal would actually give the FCC the first tool it needed to ultimately regulate content, and they argued that the FCC has no authority over the medium in the first place. It would be akin to forcing FedEx and UPS to treat all packages the same way the U.S. Postal Service does.
Free Press is the most vocal of a number of far-left and liberal advocacy groups that for nearly a decade have pushed numerous proposals for vastly increasing government regulation of the Internet.
The evidence of coordination between FCC Democrats and Free Press uncovered by Judicial Watch…
The article continues at the Washington Examiner.
