A well-regulated Internet?
MoveOn.org. The Consumer Federation of America. Consumers Union. The list of members of the new SavetheInternet.com Coalition are a mostly unsurprising bunch. Mostly left-of-center, many of whom have never met a regulation they didn’t like. But then comes the Gun Owners of America. Whoa. As Cynthia Brumfield over at IPDemocracy put it “huh? how’d they get in there?”
Last time I checked, the second Amendment referred to a “well-regulated Militia” being important. I didn’t catch the part about a regulated Internet. Yet, there was GOA, pushing for wide-ranging government controls on how network providers run their networks. Craig Fields of the group explained their position this way:
“Gun Owners of America opposes any attempt to limit or curtail political speech. Without statutory network neutrality, there is nothing to prevent big telecom companies from injecting political bias into the very skeleton of modern communications. If the telecoms believe they can frame opposition to their power grab as a liberal or anti-free-market attack, they are sadly mistaken.”
It’s hard to know where to begin with this. First, no one is talking about limiting political speech, and if Verizon or AT&T has an anti-gun bias, its news to me. (AT&T is based in Texas, for gods sake.) In any case, does anyone think that the way to protect political speech is to give the FCC more power? Someone should give these people a lesson in FCC history.
But the real eycatcher here is the assertion that this isn’t a free-market attack. Whether you support net neutrality regulations or not, you must acknowledge that they are regulations. If you think they are necessary, that’s one thing, but don’t pretend this is a “free market” initiative. It’s anti-market, no matter how many lofty references to speech you make. Fields himself gave away the game when said, regarding how the Internet market works, “even if you leave political bias out of it, simple greed takes over.” So much for the marketplace.
In other words, GOA is saying that the same government that can’t be trusted to regulate our guns somehow can be trusted to regulate the Internet. Leave our handguns alone, but go ahead and take control of the greatest engine for innovation in history.
A surpising position indeed.
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miguel
