Opponents of Internet Regulation Carry the Day [telecom]

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By Phil Kerpen, Townhall Daily, Sep 19, 2014

An incredible thing happened in the recent reply-comment period regarding the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) proposal to regulate the Internet like old-fashioned monopoly telephone service: the side telling the agency not to regulate carried the day.

The radical left, demanding federal regulatory control of the building blocks of Internet, brought all the usual hype and hoopla and had free-spending corporate backers in Google and Netflix, who want regulators to force you to pay the costs of their downstream bandwidth, so they won't have to.

This campaign by liberal special interests like MoveOn and the Sierra Club converted forty thousand websites into campaign advertisements urging visitors to support Internet regulation.

The websites participated in a stunt called "Internet Slowdown Day." These sites lied to visitors, claiming that without unprecedented new government regulation, broadband providers would start slowing down and degrading service.

Of course, such a thing has never happened, even without politicians in charge of the Internet. If a broadband provider ever tried such a stupid move, they'd lose customers in droves, and the board of directors would fire the CEO. The very fact these sites had to fake a slowdown should serve as proof that liberals are engaging in pure fantasy.

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Neal McLain