November 14, 2023
Six years ago, when the FCC wisely ended its brief dalliance with regulating the internet under utility-style “common carrier” laws, every progressive in Washington seemed to lose their minds in unison.
Bernie Sanders and CNN predicted “the end of the internet.” Chuck Schumer predicted broadband speeds would slow down to the point where streamed baseball games or Netflix movies would be unwatchable. Leftist activist groups predicted ISPs would immediately “kill off their competition,” while Wired predicted the similar demise of Silicon Valley’s startup ecosystem.
You’d think the embarrassment of having been proven so spectacularly, completely, and unambiguously wrong in the ensuing six years might counsel at least a modicum of humility as the FCC prepares to once again take up the left’s sacred cause of net neutrality. Alas, the torrent of misinformation and goalpost-moving out of FCC headquarters suggests not.
Last week, FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel put out a “fact sheet” purporting to outline how her latest net neutrality push would “protect consumers and online freedom of speech.” Among its most obvious and brazen falsehoods was the claim that the Commission’s proposal, which would reclassify broadband as a common carrier under Title II of the Communications Act, is simply going back to how the FCC treated internet service providers consistently from 2005 to 2018.
Let’s not mince words: That’s complete nonsense.
The bipartisan consensus for lightly regulating high-speed broadband dates back to Bill Clinton’s 1996 Telecom Act, which created a new framework for Title I “Information Services” as a modern alternative to sclerotic, New Deal-era Title II rules. The FCC officially confirmed in 2002 that cable broadband service belonged under Title I, and the Supreme Court upheld that decision in 2005.
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