What do you get when you combine an ISP active in Internet filtering with a left-wing group that is essentially the online ACLU? You get the broad, bipartisan opposition to the FCC’s plans for Internet regulation that are being sold as Net Neutrality.
It was remarkable enough when Governors left and right all wrote to the FCC against Net Neutrality. But now when Comcast is on the same side of a dispute as the Electronic Froniter Foundation, that’s a sign that nobody who is aware of the technical issues wants any part of what Barack Obama and FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski are planning.
Comcast has been a leader in, well, taking things away from its customers. They are routinely booed on the Internet by active users because of the steps they take to cap and restrict the heaviest users of their resources. And it now comes out that as the FCC has challenged Comcast over some of those restrictions, Comcast has fired back by challenging the legitimacy of the FCC’s expansion into regulating the Internet.
By itself that is not surprising, as Comcast has much to lose from large-scale FCC meddling. However what is surprising is to find that the Electronic Frontier Foundation appears to agree. Says Ars Techinca:
The Electronic Frontier Foundation calls the agency’s proposed rulemaking a “Trojan Horse” which is “built on a shoddy and dangerous foundation.” Since Congress didn’t give the FCC specific authority in this area, what’s next, worries EFF—an “Internet Decency Statement” pushed by conservatives, or an “Internet Lawful Use Policy” urged on the agency by the Hollywood studios? That’s why the group calls the move “a power grab that would leave the Internet subject to the regulatory whims of the FCC long after Chairman Genachowski leaves his post.”
The EFF is one of those left-leaning ACLU-type groups, so when they agree with a big telecommunications firm on the impropriety of a regulation action, that’s notable. It’s a sign that Obama’s FCC is far out of bounds in its Net Neutrality plans, and that only the farthest left-wing radicals are in favor of what Genachowski is planning for us.
We have to stop him. We have to stop the Obama drive toward Single Payer Internet. It’s the mainstream, common sense position.