The Subcommittee on Communications and Technology, chaired by Rep. Greg Walden (R-OR), has scheduled a hearing for Wednesday, Feb. 25, 2015, at 10:30 a.m. in room 2322 of the Rayburn House Office Building. The hearing is entitled, “The Uncertain Future of the Internet."
“The closer we get to the FCC rubber stamping President Obama’s Internet grab, the more disturbing it becomes. Consumers, innovators, and job creators all stand to lose from this misguided approach. What’s more, this plan sends the wrong signal around the globe that freedom and openness on the Internet are best determined by governments - a far cry from decades of bipartisan commitment to light-touch regulation," said Walden.
Next week, members of the subcommittee will discuss the implications of President Obama’s plan to regulate the Internet and what it means for the future of online innovation.as they are posted.
Feb. 17, 2015
Dictators Love the FCC’s Plan to Regulate the Internet
The Obama administration’s efforts to treat the Web like a utility has fans from Saudi Arabia to Putin’s Kremlin.
By Robert M. McDowell and Gordon M. Goldstein
On Thursday the Federal Communications Commission will stop accepting public comments on the divisive plan to regulate the Internet as a public utility before bringing the matter to vote on Feb. 26. The latest lunge at more Web regulation puts global Internet freedom and prosperity in jeopardy and fatally undermines decades of bipartisan consensus on America’s foreign policy for the Internet.
Some proponents of more Internet regulation-for instance, President Obama -maintain that “the strongest possible" laws are needed to prevent Internet service providers, such as cable and phone companies, from acting in anticompetitive ways and harming consumers by, say, blocking selected Web destinations. They argue that the FCC must declare the Internet a public utility under Title II of the Communications Act of 1934, which was designed for the Ma Bell phone monopoly. FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler announced last month that he would align his proposals with the White House.
This represents a stunning reversal of the policies of the Clinton and Bush administrations. Both presidencies pursued a highly successful “hands-off" approach toward the Internet and argued that the dynamic network should not be regulated like a public utility domestically or internationally. The result: The Internet is the greatest global deregulation success story of all time. …
In 2012 at the World Conference on International Telecommunications, which we both attended as members of the American delegation, the U.S. led a coalition of 55 nations that refused to sign a global treaty that would presume new authority to regulate disparate aspects of the Internet. Now, however, the Obama administration is signaling to the world that more government regulation of the Internet should be the norm. …
The Obama administration and its FCC have chosen a perilous moment to reverse decades of bipartisan agreement to limit Internet regulation. They can’t have it both ways. By creating an irreconcilable contradiction between America’s domestic and foreign policies, the cause of an open and freedom-enhancing global Internet will suffer.
Mr. McDowell, a former Republican commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission, is a partner in the communications practice at Wiley Rein LLP in Washington, D.C. Mr. Goldstein, a Democrat, is managing director at the global technology investment firm Silver Lake Partners.
