FCC Seizes Power to Regulate Internet

Until now, I haven't really commented on the FCC's latest ruling granting it control over the internet. For those of you who don't know, last week citizens for the first time got federally approved rules regulating what they view on the Internet. These rules are not based on any sort of constitutional provision and clearly do not fit with our tradition of a limited and defined national government. The new regulations will likely lead to future regulation, control, censorship, and taxes of companies and citizens that use the internet. The Federal Communications Commission on Tuesday voted 3-2 (3 Democrat appointments vs 2 Republican appointments) to back (Democrat appointed) Chairman Julius Genachowski's plan for what is commonly known as "net neutrality," or rules prohibiting free companies from deciding how they run their businesses in an environment of competition and openness. Democratic President Barack Obama, in classical double-speak, said that having a limited number of unelected rules control our behaviors in a free society will "help preserve the free and open nature of the Internet."

The move to take freedom and future property from free citizens was prompted by liberal groups that love power and authority over freedom. Recently private companies have begun to experiment with ways to handle the growing problem of network congestion. But the Chairman of the FCC felt that instead of having private industry experiment with the best way to run its business that he wanted to instead control that business, even though he lacks the long record of experience and accumulated wisdom of being in business of all of those trained professionals whose whole life is running internet companies. In politically-appointed Mr. Genachowski's opinion, instead of selectively slowing certain traffic to cope with congestion he thinks providers could consider charging consumers for how much data they consume, but no one was listening to him, so he issued a royal decree to make people listen to him. He doesn't have to live with the consequences of that decision or have thousands of employees salaries be dependent on that position, and is unaccountable to voters, and thus this move marks yet another way that our nation slips into tyranny and oppression.

Our elected branch of officials, who are given the just and moral power to make decisions such as this, decided not to give this power and authority to the FCC. But the FCC didn't like that, and so unjustly and immorally seized this power and authority. A tyranny is marked by such behavior and such decisions. Decisions that were made by Democrat appointments. Vote appropriately next election, and for fun, read this book: Law and Disorder in Cyberspace: Abolish the FCC and Let Common Law Rule the Telecosm.