"How did the commission come to acquire this power?" was the core question that Ronald H. Coase asked in a seminal paper he wrote about the FCC in 1959.

• Kudos to Jeff Eisenach and Adam Theirer for an outstanding must-read article in The American, "Coase vs. the Neo-Progressives" that celebrates Mr. Coase's brilliant, ahead-of-his-time insights, and his exceptional clarity-of-thought in asking that profound question fifty years ago -- that couldn't be more appropriate to ask the FCC today.

How did the FCC acquire the power to regulate the "open Internet?

The FCC did not "acquire this power," the FCC is proposing to simply assume and assert this power by tech elite  acclamation.

The term "net neutrality" slogan was first coined by Columbia Professor Tim Wu in 2002, and Google rebranded it as the "open Internet" in 2007 when Google bankrolled the creation of the Open Internet Coalition. Net neutrality was further sloganized as "the First Amendment of the Internet," as tech elites have self-deemed that an "open Internet" is an American's "right."

I admire clarity of thought, and Richard Epstein's Op-ed in the Financial Times, "Net Neutrality at the Crossroads," represents some of the clearest thinking I have found on net neutrality. Please read it.

Mr. Epstein does a great job of exposing the folly beneath the vacuous sloganeering of net neutrality proponents.

What would be the DOJ's interest in having a formal investigation/review of the Google-Twitter agreement?

Google again has blocked search advertising that promotes political views that Google does not share.

• On the morning of the FCC's net neutrality vote last week, Bret Glass of ExtremeTech.com tried to advertise his white paper, that advocated a light regulatory touch, on Google Adwords only to find that Google blocked his ad as not meeting their "guidelines." (See Mr. Glass' full recounting of this non-neutral content blocking incident at the end of this post.) 
  • This is not the first time Google has blocked content that did not comport with Google's political/policy agenda. For example, Google blocked anti-Moveon.org ads proposed by a U.S. Senator's campaign.

The "relevance" of this evidence of net neutrality violations by Google, to the FCC's just-proposed net neutrality regulations, is that the FCC's clearly stated purposes are: to prevent companies with market power from infringing on free speech and to ensure that those with market power are transparent about their market practices that affect the free flow of information. 

Like the child that plays with matches is surprised when the fire he started threatens to burn his own house, Google CEO Eric Schmidt shared his gulity conscience with the Washington Post last week --  i.e. that the net neutrality regulation fire Google started and fanned, would be "terrible," if it burned Google and "led the government to involve itself as a regulator of the broader Internet."

• Lobbying the Washington Post, after its editorial, "The FCC's Heavy hand," opposed net neutrality, Google's CEO Schmidt admitted to the Post that: "It is possible for the Government to screw the Internet up, big-time."
  • I wonder if anyone asked Mr. Schmidt if it is possible that the Government could screw broadband competition up, big-time?

Did it not occur to Google that bankrolling a flame-thrower-style net neutrality campaign urging preemptive, draconian regulation to prevent a potential problem, might not torch the decade of strong bipartisan consensus and calm in the Congress and at the FCC -- to not regulate or tax the Internet?

The FCC's proposed Open Internet regulations (NPRM) are sweeping and audacious.

First, the FCC proposed rules are audaciously attempting to implement the introduced-but-never-passed Markey bill (HR 3458) entitled:  the "Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2009." The purpose, premises, language, and core positions are nearly identical for anyone willing to forensically compare the NPRM and HR 3458. 

NetCompetition.org Comments on FCC Open Internet NPRM

“The best way to preserve the open Internet is to preserve current pro-competition policy”

WASHINGTON – In response to the Federal Communications Commission’s proposed Open Internet NPRM today, NetCompetition.org Chairman Scott Cleland offered these comments for attribution:

Microsoft publicly announced it has already launched a beta of bing Twitter that incorporates Twitter tweets into Microsoft's search results, while Google also announced an agreement with Twitter, but said in an announcement blog post that: "we look forward to having a product that showcases how tweets can make search better in the coming months."

The glaring question is why Google, which prides itself on speed and innovation, and which routinely launches new products and services in beta, will not offer a Twitter product for "months."

The most logical conclusion is what I blogged and tweeted about on October 9th: "Will Google seek DOJ approval of any Twitter agreement?"

Does anyone else see the irony of a staunchly anti-business and anti-property activist organization like FreePress -- which openly advocates for an information commons and a broadband public utility model -- attempting to be credible doing private investment analysis for the FCC? 

• Mr. Derek Turner of Free Press wrote  "Finding the Bottom Line: The truth about network neutrality & investment." 
• The last time FreePress attempted economics in a public forum, FreePress asked in a letter to Congress "whether above-cost... pricing for broadband constitutes an unfair business practice." 
  • Given that FreePress was not aware that "above cost... pricing" is called profit and has always been legal in America, despite FreePress' views to the contrary, call me skeptical about FreePress' competence and genuineness in attempting private investment analysis.

If FreePress does not believe in free enterprise or private property, and does not understand concepts like profit, I am doubtful they can accurately or objectively analyze the economics or the business case for private long-term capital investments. 

The litmus test of whether the FCC's proposed net neutrality rules are really endeavoring to prevent anti-competitive behavior on the Internet (and not about turning private broadband networks into a public utility), will be whether the rules apply to all Internet competitors, which could be anti-competitive, like the existing consensus FCC Broadband Policy Statement already does. 

• If reports prove correct, the FCC will propose to remove the existing FCC net neutrality principle #4 that "consumers are entitled to competition among network providers, application and service providers and content providers," and that new net neutrality regulations apply only to broadband ISPs.
  • Such a change would be new anti-competition policy and completely contrary to existing U.S. pro-competition law/policy, and FCC precedents.
  • Such a change would also not be neutral or fair, but arbitrary and capricious.

Why an FCC Googleopoly exemption from Net neutrality would be transparently capricious.

First, there is more evidence of violations against net neutrality by one company, Google, in one year, than there is evidence against the entire broadband sector over the last five years!