Friday, December 3, 2010

FCC plans to regulate Internet to "preserve the freedom and openness of the Internet."


Add this plan to the "unlikely" column. Internet users now have maximum freedom. You can't regulate more freedom. You can only regulate behavior and that will reduce freedom.
With a straight face, Mr. Genachowski suggested that government red tape will increase the "freedom" of online services that have flourished because bureaucratic busybodies have been blocked from tinkering with the Web. Ordinarily, it would be appropriate at this point to supply an example from the proposed regulations illustrating the problem. Mr. Genachowski's draft document has over 550 footnotes and is stamped "non-public, for internal use only" to ensure nobody outside the agency sees it until the rules are approved in a scheduled Dec. 21 vote. So much for "openness."

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