Nick Gillespie
Reason.com
2/19/2015
Speaking at the Code/Media conference in California, entrepreneur Mark Cuban—who made his pile selling Broadcast.com back in the day—told his audience that allowing the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to regulate the Internet in the name of Net Neutrality (or anything else) will “fuck everything up.” He continued: “Having them overseeing the Internet scares the shit out of me.”…
…At the conference, Cuban (correctly) argued that apart from a couple of isolated cases, there’s no evidence that ISPs are throttling or banning access to particular sites and services and he said he’s fine with Congress passing a law prohibiting ISPs from blocking legal sites.
The hot-button issue of the day is less the blocking of whole sites and more preferential treatment that might be given to some traffic. Although it’s not an exact fit for Net Neutrality (read more here), the case that scares many neutrality advocates revolves around whether Comcast slowed down Netflix streaming video as a way of getting more money out of the video service to deliver its content. Comcast and other ISPs claim that Netflix was bogging down their networks and the company should pay higher fees to carry their content so the ISPs can increase capacity. Netflix and others argue that ISPs, which control “the last-mile” to users are essentially extorting high tolls out of companies with popular services. The ISPs, they charge, have effective monopolies over service areas and this sort of action will become increasingly common if the ‘net isn’t regulated more heavily by the government.
Cuban is having none of it…
The entire article, with video, is at Reason.com
Related: I Had An Interesting Conversation With Mark Cuban About The Future Of The Internet
…Cuban told me it was impossible to tell what the internet would be used for in the future and that letting the government have too much regulatory control could slow innovation…
Inside Obama’s net fix (video)
This coming Thursday, Feb. 26, the Federal Communications Commission will formally pass its fourth set of regulations on broadband Internet services. It’s a sobering thought.
The Internet is working well, so it’s not obvious that the FCC needs to help it. American companies own 10 of the world’s 15 largest websites (Google, Amazon, and Facebook to name an obvious few); the United States has greater access to advanced cable and fiber networks than any large country except Japan; it was the first to deploy advanced 4G/LTE mobile networks; it has more smartphones than anywhere else in the world; and it exports more digital goods per capita than any other nation…
…The FCC says it’s not passing new rules in hopes of improving the Internet but to preserve it as it is with “light touch regulations.” The agency is taking action because courts have voided all but a sliver of its three previous sets of rules. And President Obama raised the stakes by publicly urging the FCC to impose the “strongest possible rules” on the Internet to fill the regulatory vacuum…
Obama’s Move To Regulate Internet Has Activists’ ‘Fingerprints All Over It’ (video)
…“We’ve been hearing for weeks from our allies in DC that the only thing that could stop FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler from moving ahead with his sham proposal to gut net neutrality was if we could get the President to step in. So we did everything in our power to make that happen. We took the gloves off and played hard, and now we get to celebrate a sweet victory.”…
…The over 300 pages of new regulations are under seal and have only been viewed by administration officials — they were never allowed to be seen by the public. However, Wheeler already confirmed the policy allows the FCC to regulate the internet under Title II of the Communications Act of 1934. This is the same legislation that the FCC used to break up Ma Bell in the 1980’s. Title II lets the FCC choose what “charges” and “practices” are “just and reasonable.”…
Update: FCC chief pressed to release net neutrality rules
A key Republican lawmaker in Congress called for Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler to make proposed net neutrality regulations public before a planned Thursday vote on the measure.
In the latest wrinkle in the Republicans’ battle to quash Wheeler’s proposals, Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, who’s also the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, sent a letter today to Wheeler, questioning whether the FCC has been “independent, fair and transparent” in crafting the rules to protect content on the Internet.
“Although arguably one of the most sweeping new rules in the commission’s history, the process was conducted without using many of the tools at the chairman’s disposal to ensure transparency and public review,” he said…
