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posted by n1 on Tuesday March 03 2015, @06:11AM   Printer-friendly
from the it-takes-300-pages-to-redefine-neutrality dept.

The bloom may have already fallen off the Net Neutrality rose. As reported yesterday in the Wall Street Journal (paywalled):

When Google's Eric Schmidt called White House officials a few weeks ago to oppose President Obama's demand that the Internet be regulated as a utility, they told him to buzz off. The chairman of the company that led lobbying for "net neutrality" learned the Obama plan made in its name instead micromanages the Internet.

Mr. Schmidt is not the only liberal mugged by the reality of Obamanet, approved on party lines last week by the Federal Communications Commission. The 300-plus pages of regulations remain secret, but as details leak out, liberals have joined the opposition to ending the Internet as we know it.

It seems as though, in their zeal to "stick it" to the ISPs, most proponents didn't consider that when you allow 3 unelected people to issue rulings on something as large and ubiquitous as the Internet, bad things can happen:

Until Congress or the courts block Obamanet, expect less innovation. During a TechFreedom conference last week, dissenting FCC commissioner Ajit Pai asked: "If you were an entrepreneur trying to make a splash in a marketplace that's already competitive, how are you going to differentiate yourself if you have to build into your equation whether or not regulatory permission is going to be forthcoming from the FCC? According to this, permissionless innovation is a thing of the past."

The other dissenting Republican commissioner, Michael O'Rielly, warned: "When you see this document, it's worse than you imagine." The FCC has no estimate on when it will make the rules public.

 
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  • (Score: 4, Informative) by goody on Tuesday March 03 2015, @01:34PM

    by goody (2135) on Tuesday March 03 2015, @01:34PM (#152476)

    Not sure why the regulations aren't public now, given that apparently they now have the force of law.

    The regulations aren't public right now because the two Republican commissioners, the ones who were complaining about it not being public prior to vote, are withholding their document edits. So the FCC can't release it yet. Ajit Pai complained about the lack of transparency but failed to mention the FCC never releases rulemakings prior to a vote, and the FCC released an NPRM (Notice of Proposed Rulemaking) that received public comment, prior to the rulemaking. They followed standard FCC procedure, and Pai is just being a jerk so he can score political points with the right.

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