Google

How Consumers, Innovation & Business Will be Collateral Damage of FCC's
Title II Utility Regulation of the Internet -- Why Only Congress Can Resolve Net Neutrality Legitimately

Date: March 26, 2015

Location: House Rayburn Building 2218

Time: 2:00 PM - 3:30 PM

Moderator: Scott Cleland, NetCompetition
Panelists:

Public evidence concerning the amount of special access Google has to the highest reaches of the U.S. Government creates at least the appearance that the U.S. Government’s business may not be “conducted with impartiality and integrity” as required under Federal ethics rules.

Previously unknown facts about the FTC staff’s 2011 Google search bias investigation have the makings of a potential scandal and cover-up with broad repercussions for Google with the European Commission, other countries, the FTC, State AGs and Congress.   

The WSJ gained inadvertent access to the FTC’s 2011 staff report about its investigation of Google’s search practices. FTC staff concluded: Google abused its monopoly power in search and search advertising; harmed Internet users and competitors; and manipulated its search results by favoring its own content over competitors’ content.

I.   Summary

Expect the FCC’s new Open Internet Order’s assertion of Title II authority ultimately to be rejected in court (90%), because of its core illegal confiscatory purpose and its serial ends-justify-the-means trampling of due process. 

The FCC’s Title II legal defense is a “modern” day version of “the Emperor has no clothes” fable, where the vain FCC confidently parades in public clothed in the legal fabric that utopian legal alchemists have convinced the FCC is invisible only to those who are “hopelessly stupid” or “unfit for their positions.” Sadly, this emperor (the FCC) has no clothes (sustainable legal case).

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                                           

March 12, 2015    Contact:  Scott Cleland 703-217-2407

History Will Judge the FCC’s Regulation of the Internet as the FCC’s Biggest Mistake Ever

The FCC’s Order is Unlawful, Unconstitutional, Unwarranted, Unnecessary & Unworkable

WASHINGTON D.C. – The following may be attributed to Scott Cleland, Chairman of NetCompetition:

On February 26^th, the FCC executed President Obama’s call to “implement the strongest possible rules” to regulate the Internet as a telephone utility under “Title II” of the Telecommunications Act.

Legally, the result of this “reclassification” was for President Obama and the FCC to assert regulatory jurisdiction over the Internet ecosystem, creating a de facto American “Digital [Internet] Single Market” industrial policy, like the European Commission is in the process of creating for the European Union.

Legally, America now has a single digital telecommunications/Internet market/ecosystem because the FCC is effectively reclassifying Internet traffic as Title II telecommunications and Title II is a holistic, end-to-end, 1934 regulatory regime designed for the FCC to decide most everything in the assumed monopoly telecommunications ecosystem from originating and terminating local access, long distance, phone and network equipment manufacturing, directories, etc.

Please don’t miss my Daily Caller  op-ed: “How America Protects National Champion Google in the EU”

• It spotlights the facts of how exceptionally integrated Google has become with the U.S. Government on most all of the commercial matters most critical to Google’s business success.

***

Google Unaccountability Series

Part 0: Google's Poor & Defiant Settlement Record [5-1-12]

Part 1: Why Google Thinks It Is Above the Law [4-17-12]

Link to full White Paper -- here.

Summary

The FCC’s Open Internet Order, which reclassified the commercial Internet as a Title II utility, is very likely (80%) in the end, to be overturned in court – for a third time.

The FCC’s legal theory and many core assumptions are so aggressive, it’s clear that the FCC expects, and needs, continual and maximal deference from the court to prevail. The FCC also requires the courts to view the FCC’s most aggressive assertion of unbounded authority ever, as a mere administrative interpretation of ambiguous law, and not a political bypass of Congress and the 1996 Telecom Act.       

I was asked to speak at CPAC 2015 on a February 28^thpanel at National Harbor on Google entitled: “The United States of Google: Big Brother & Big Data” with Seton Motley of Less Government and Erik Telford of the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity.

My power point presentation, “Google’s Anti-Conservative Values,” for the first time contrasted the traditional conservative values of the American Conservative Union with Google’s values.

Below is an outline of my remarks:

Google Has Anti-Conservative Values

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                                           

February 26, 2015

Contact:  Scott Cleland 703-217-2407

Strike Three in Court? FCC’s Rube Goldberg Legal Theory is Contrived, Arbitrary & Unbounded