After four years of FreePress' Chicken Little "the net neutrality sky is falling," faux-urgency tactics, the net neutrality movement has lost a lot of credibility and influence. We all know that the net neutrality sky has not fallen and that the broadband industry has not acted anti-competitively as claimed; on the contrary, the broadband industry has worked constructively and tirelessly to address the FCC's net neutrality enforcement concerns in a reasonable and constructive manner that promotes innovation, investment, growth and jobs.
No matter, FreePress is back at trying to manufacture some faux urgency magic by ginning up breathless op-eds from friendlies that the "time is now," that "there is a closing window of opportunity" to act on net neutrality. Rob Pegararo writes on cue: "It's put-up or shut-up time for net neutrality advocates," and the Seattle Times provides a little harmony in the dwindling net neutrality chorus in its editorial: "The time has passed for compromise on net neutrality."
FreePress' problem is that people have wised up to their repeated hysterical calls to "Save the Internet" from a problem that has never materialized as they recklessly warned. FreePress has failed miserably in finding or defining any real-world problem that needs radical intervention to fix.
This latest FreePress-generated media-manipulation-fest urging the FCC to regulate the broadband Internet as a 1934 telephone utility, still has no facts or true urgency behind it, only increasingly desperate faux urgency tactics.
The cold reality is that the facts and true urgency is all behind the FCC not over-reaching and not hyper-regulating the Internet to solve an unproven and still undefined problem.
FreePress and its net neutrality minions are so out of touch, that they are oblivious of Congress' constitutional role and prerogatives, oblivious of the listless and fragile economy that is not creating enough jobs and that does not need the FCC deflating one of the few healthy, growing and innovating sectors of the economy, and oblivious that there is a national mid-term election going on where the "grass-roots" that FreePress claims to speak for, will actually get to speak for themselves.
Like Chicken Little, FreePress and its allies are asking the FCC to totally ignore everything that the FCC knows is real around them, the Constitution, the law, the Congress, the economy, investment, innovation, and the election.
