Wired Opinion recently published a list of three major dangers from last week’s Net Neutrality ruling that aren’t getting enough attention, and TechFreedom’s analysis made the cut:
2. Whether we want to admit it or not, we continue to give more control over the internet to the government.
We’ve been so focused on how the FCC “lost” the net neutrality order, that we may not realize the Commission could now have unchecked powers over regulating the internet, argue TechFreedom’s Berin Szoka and International Center for Law & Economics’s Geoffrey Manne. No matter what you think of government regulation — that it’s always somewhat necessary or inevitably inadequate for complex issues – nothing good comes out of giving any agency unchecked power (just look at the NSA, or even the U.N. attempts at internet governance). What’s worse is that we won’t see it coming, because the FCC’s power will creep in incrementally, on a case-by-case basis — a death by a thousand cuts.
Read the full article here. TechFreedom was among the first to point out that the ruling actually granted far more power to the FCC than it took away — to learn more, check out our op-ed in Wired and our other work on Net Neutrality.