With due credit to "Ripley's Believe it or Not!®," so much odd and bizarre is happening in Washington in the "name" of “net neutrality” that the topic calls for its own collection of: "Believe it or Not!®" oddities.
INTERNET FAST LANES:
Net Neutrality activists who have long condemned the FCC for not making the Internet fast enough now condemn the FCC for proposing to make the Internet faster!
Google and Amazon oppose the FCC enabling them to pay for fast-lane delivery of their online services when they both are launching very-costly, same-day, home delivery services!
The U.S. Post Office, Fedex, UPS, and DHL, which all allow faster, paid-prioritized delivery of letters and packages, the airlines and the TSA, which allow faster paid-prioritized plane-boarding and airport-security-clearance, and consumers, which have long paid more for faster-lanes to the Internet, apparently “didn’t get the Free Press memo” that “paid-prioritization” and faster service is a bad thing!
Net neutrality activists think they can get Gigabit-speed broadband by imposing kilobit-speed Title II regulations!
Net neutrality activists’ latest claim that we currently have an equal speed Internet with no slow or fast lanes, ignores what all consumers know, that they can get free access to slower Internet or pay more for whatever faster Internet speed they want or need!
Sloganeers’ serial and opportunistic rebrandings of “net neutrality” have so confused it’s meaning that the latest “No Internet fast lanes” rallying cry implies opposition to most everyone’s desire for a speediest Internet!
By opposing Internet fast lanes as unfair, net neutrality proponents are arguing for everyone to have equally slower Internet service!
TITLE II UTILITY REGULATION
While advocating the use of 706 authority to accelerate broadband deployment and “remove barriers to infrastructure investment,” the FCC also is toying with imposing Title II utility regulation, which would enshrine the FCC as the single biggest barrier to infrastructure investment ever!
In seriously considering Title II utility regulation of broadband, the FCC considers protecting edge providers freedom to innovate without permission by taking away broadband providers freedom to innovate without the permission of the FCC!
America’s aristechractic Internet companies, which enjoy the least regulation, taxation, and law enforcement from government of any sector, are aggressively pushing the FCC for the most draconian type of regulation possible on the broadband industry!
Internet Association members imagine that playing with the launch of a Title II reclassification “nuke” would present no risk of “fallout” for them or the Internet ecosystem!
Internet Association President Michael Beckerman strongly opposed Net Neutrality regulation and Title II reclassification when he was on the Hill, but now is among its most ardent proponents!
Net neutrality coiner Tim Wu has proposed a novel Title II corporate welfare scheme to the FCC that would apply Title II regulation only to Silicon Valley’s downstreaming “telecommunications,” that combined with his recommendation for zero-pricing of downstream traffic, would then force users to shoulder the entire cost burden of upgrading the Internet’s infrastructure!
Net Neutrality professors Tim Wu and Susan Crawford think broadband should be regulated as a utility like monopoly electricity, water and gas utilities are, but electricity, water and gas cannot be delivered via copper, coax, fiber, wireless and satellite like broadband can!
COMMERCIALLY REASONABLE:
The Internet Association threatens to “go SOPA” on the FCC if they have to pay “commercially reasonable” prices for special delivery of their high-volume video streaming rather than their non-negotiable demand of a zero price for downstream traffic – forever!
Silicon Valley interests and net neutrality activists are making a federal case over the difference between a “commercially reasonable” and a “just and reasonable” pricing standard!
Silicon Valley companies and investors suggest that the Internet start-ups they fund can’t afford a “commercially reasonable” price for bandwidth!
Strange but true.
“Believe it or Not!®”
