Time For Real Net Neutrality
OP-ED
ROGER STONE: Time For Real Net Neutrality
In 2015, when writing his dissenting opinion against FCC 15-24 —
formally known as the Report and Order on Remand, Declaratory Ruling, and
Order in the Matter of Protecting and Promoting the Open Internet, but commonly
referred to as ‘Net Neutrality,” — Federal Communications Commission
Commissioner Ajit Pai had this to say:
“This is
not only a radical departure from the bipartisan, market-oriented policies that
have served us so well for the last two decades. It is also an about-face from
the proposals the FCC made just last May. So why is the FCC changing course?
Why is the FCC turning its back on Internet freedom? Is it because we now have
evidence that the Internet is not open? No. Is it because we have discovered
some problem with our prior interpretation of the law? No. We are flip-flopping
for one reason and one reason alone. President Obama told us to do so.”
The singular reason why
this-so called “Net Neutrality” came to the forefront is because then President
Barack Obama ordered it. And who was prodding Obama to do so? Google.
Microsoft. Facebook. Twitter. Amazon.
The Tech Left, funded largely by
George Soros, had decided to champion under the banner of a benign-sounding
“Net Neutrality” campaign and seize a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to grab the
moral high ground in their determination to allow the giant edge providers to
censor the Internet to suit their ideological preferences — ridding the
Internet of conservative and libertarian content.
Google was especially vested, as
the tech giant helped write the 2015 net neutrality rules and Google employees
had more access to the White House during Barack Obama’s term than did Lois
Lerner.
In the words of the other
dissenting FCC commissioner, Michael O’Reilly, Net Neutrality is not
“forbearance” but rather “faux-bearance.” This coined word invokes the bogus
nature of the claim that Net Neutrality promotes a fair and free market
Internet, with a neutral level playing field.
The term “forbearance,” in FCC
parlance, means that the FCC can elect not to apply rules in specific instances
and to specific entities. The FCC can pick and choose whom to regulate
vigorously and whom to give a free pass. This is de-facto creation of winners
and losers by governmental fiat.
The truth is the Tech Left crafted
“Net Neutrality” rules to regulate the Internet under Title II specifications
that defined Internet Service Providers — the companies like Comcast, Verizon,
and AT&T that plug you to into the internet — to be bound by “Net
Neutrality” rules, demanding that the internet service providers treat all edge
providers equally.
But since the giant edge providers
— companies like Google, Facebook, and Twitter — are content providers, they
are exempt from “Net Neutrality” rules, free to restrain content by censoring
out all conservative and libertarian views at will, without so much as an
explanation to anyone why the objectionable views were banned..
The “Net Neutrality” rules as
written by the Soros-funded Tech Left coalition would apply only internet
service providers (ISPs), because under Title II only these ISPs (not the giant
edge providers) are considered “common carriers,” defined under the Federal
Communications Act as if their role on the Internet constituted nothing more
than the Alexander Graham Bell telephone companies that were around 83 years
ago, when the Federal Communications Act was passed.
The giant edge providers under
“Net Neutrality” rules elevate themselves to the new dimension of “Internet
information providers” that live in a realm above the lowly ISP “common
carrier” Internet plug-in companies.
Abiding in this higher realm,
lowly regulators need concern themselves with ruling upon the wisdom and
judgment giant edge providers like Google, Facebook and Twitter exercise in
passing their ideological judgments.
Giant internet content providers
breathing the refined air of Soros-funded Silicon Valley see no problem
defining “Net Neutrality” in a way that negates the First Amendment for
conservative and libertarian views they despise. They are confident in their
judgment that the First Amendment is nothing more than a primitive rule that
derives from a by-gone era when printing presses were the ruling communications
technology.
Neuro-linguistic programmatic
word-play is a hallmark of the Left.
Consider the “Affordable Care Act”
which makes healthcare less affordable, “Common Core” which lowers education to
the lowest common denominator, “Global Food Security” which ironically
increases world hunger and the “USA Freedom Act” which decreases freedom and
liberty for all Americans.
“Net Neutrality” gives the US
Federal Government the power to choose winners and losers, in an egregiously
partisan manner. “Net Neutrality” says nothing about neutrality and everything
about governmental control and nepotistic picking of favorites — the very
opposite of neutrality.
Picking the winners wasn’t enough
for Team Obama and his rabid leftists. They also wanted to create losers by
punishing opponents with the cudgel of insurmountable and cryptic government
regulations.
FCC Commissioner Michael O’Reilly
identifies this point as part of the opening statement of his dissenting
opinion:
“Today a
majority of the Commission attempts to usurp the authority of Congress by
re-writing the Communications Act to suit its own “values” and political ends.
The item claims to forbear from certain monopoly-era Title II regulations while
reserving the right to impose them using other provisions or at some point in
the future.”
He later said “This
statutory shell game seems to be height of arbitrary and capricious
rulemaking.”
The American people were sold a
bill-of-goods with FCC 15-24.
We were told that forcing cable
providers to allow anyone to use their infrastructure would increase
competition and industry investment. Exactly the opposite has occurred.
Broadband choice has not expanded and broadband investment actually declined in
the years since the passage of the so-called net neutrality rules, undoing a
decade long trend of ever greater investment.
“Net Neutrality” has also failed
to keep the internet free and open. By providing forbearance cover to their
Silicon Valley political patrons, the FCC functionaries empowered during the
Obama administration look the other way as the First Amendment rights of
millions of Americans with conservative- or libertarian-minded viewpoints have
been trampled.
By establishing itself as the sole
regulator and arbiter of the structural basis of the internet, the FCC has
legalized censorship, allowing Soros-funded groups to run rampant spreading the
most violent messages possible, while at the same time aggressively censoring
Trump supporters and patriotic Americans who desire only to make their country
great again. In the Obama years, complaints to the single regulating body, the
FCC, were expected to fall upon deaf ears.
If Donald J. Trump had not won the
election in 2016, there is little question that the vibrant alternative media
that exists today would be but a dim shadow of its current self. Even today,
calls for outright censorship of Breitbart, Drudge Report, and Infowars are
screeched out of the same mouths that call for “fairness” of content.
When the Obama-appointed partisans
passed FCC 15-24 in their 3-2 vote, dissenter Ajit Pai closed his comments
with:
“At the
beginning of this proceeding, I quoted Google’s former CEO, Eric Schmidt, who
once said: ‘The Internet is the first thing that humanity has built that
humanity doesn’t understand.’
This
proceeding makes abundantly clear that the FCC still doesn’t get it.
But the American people clearly do. The threat
to Internet freedom has awakened a sleeping giant. And I am optimistic that we
will look back on today’s vote as an aberration, a temporary deviation from the
bipartisan path that has served us so well. I don’t know whether this plan will
be vacated by a court, reversed by Congress, or overturned by a future
Commission. But I do believe that its days are numbered.
For all of
these reasons, I dissent.”
How fortunately ironic that
it is Ajit Pai himself, as the Trump-appointed chair of the FCC, that will pull
the plug on the ill-intended act called “Net Neutrality.”
President Trump’s FCC is
absolutely right to roll back these rules, which applied only to broadband
service providers like Comcast, Verizon and AT&T.
In closing, this glaring example
of a ham-handed attempt to abuse governmental power for partisan gain
demonstrates clearly that Congress needs to act quickly to establish
protections for American consumers so that all companies play by the same
rules. Nobody should be allowed to block content. Social media has become the
new “public square”, and First Amendment protections equally apply.
Roger Stone is a legendary Republican political consultant and a
veteran of many national Republican presidential campaigns. He’s also the men’s
fashion correspondent for The Daily Caller and editor of Stonezone.com.
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