Monday, March 2, 2015

So the Government Took over the Internet the Other Day...

...not with a bang, but a whimper.  No one voted on it, it was not discussed in Congress, no one but the inner circle at the FCC was permitted to know what is in the plan's 300+ pages, and yet it rather significantly changed the Internet into a government regulated utility.  [There is a rumor that websites will eventually require licensing and, of course, taxes, which is the real reason for the change of status.  This is probably just a rumor, though.  After all, when has a government ever done such a thing?]

As an acquaintance notes:
New competitive models and technologies will now have to be vetted by government bureaucrats who will soon be captured by the industry itself.  It literally always happens this way.  How much innovation did you ever see in the landline phone business?  My telephone at my birth in 1962 was identical to the one in my dorm room in 1984.  Power companies?  Water companies?  Cell voice service?  What innovation have you ever seen?  What new competitors have you seen pop up to challenge the old guys?  Only in cellular data has there been any innovation, and that is to date the one place in phone communications the FCC has not regulated with this model.