Freedom Line Blog

Fresh off his famous catastrophes on the healthcare and deficit reduction fronts, Barack Obama momentarily shifted his bumbling gaze yesterday to Net Neutrality.

What exactly is Net Neutrality, you ask?

Well, think of it as ObamaCare for the Internet, and you get the essential idea.  Net Neutrality would federally bureaucratize Internet service by dictating rigid price controls and traffic surge management to providers, among other toxic provisions.  The Internet seemed to be doing just fine so far, what with the ongoing explosion of content delivery and devices like the iPhone.  But why should that stop Obama from “fixing” something that isn’t broken?

In an unintentionally amusing commentary entitled “President Obama Hearts Net Neutrality,” Stacey Higginbotham praises Obama, who appears to be shifting his Midas-in-reverse focus to this dangerous campaign.  When asked about Net Neutrality, Obama responded:

I’m a big believer in Net Neutrality.  I campaigned on this.  I continue to be a strong supporter of it.  My FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski has indicated that he shares the view that we’ve got to keep the Internet open, that we don’t want to create a bunch of gateways that prevent somebody who doesn’t have a lot of money but has a good idea from being able to start their next YouTube or their next Google on the Internet.  So this is something we’re committed to.

Consider the absurdity of Obama’s comment.  He curiously demands that we “keep the Internet open,” even though it has somehow managed to remain open all this time without the need for crippling Net Neutrality regulations.  And he suggests that Net Neutrality is necessary to allow innovators to “start their next YouTube or their next Google,” leaving one to wonder how anyone ever managed to start YouTube or Google in the first place without Net Neutrality.

Net Neutrality advocates dishonestly concoct the bogeyman of sinister Internet service providers blocking web content, but the reality is that America faces a continuing exponential increase in Internet traffic.  This rapid growth will require innovations and investment by Internet service providers to carry it, just as they have done to date.  Obama wrongly alleges that Net Neutrality is somehow necessary to allow the next YouTube or Google, but the truth is that the next YouTube or Google will be impossible if network providers are prohibited by bureaucratic Net Neutrality regulations from managing the surge in data traffic.

The need for freedom and flexibility of network providers to innovate will become even more critical as Americans increasingly shift to smart phones.

As noted by a report in today’s Wall Street Journal, “carriers are already running at over 80% capacity,” and “are scrambling to build out next-generation networks that promise higher bandwidth and faster speeds.”  If Obama and his FCC succeed in imposing suffocating Net Neutrality regulations that they recently proposed, however, service providers’ difficulties will only increase as Obama bureaucratizes the Internet in the same way that he attempted to bureaucratize healthcare.

Americans concerned about the future of Internet growth and innovation must therefore act quickly to stop Obama’s reverse-Midas Net Neutrality scheme.  Please contact your Senators and Representative immediately and demand a stop to this destructive scheme before it’s too late.