With each passing year, Washington’s appetite for Internet regulation grows. While “Hands Off the Net!” was a popular rallying cry just a decade ago—and was even a shared sentiment among many policymakers—today’s zeitgeist seems to instead be “Hands All Over the Net.” Countless interests and regulatory advocates have pet Internet policy issues they want Washington to address, including copyright, privacy, cybersecurity, online taxation, broadband regulation, among many others.

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) wants to do something to slow down this legislative locomotive. He has proposed the “Internet American Moratorium Act (IAMA), which would impose a two-year moratorium on “any new laws, rules or regulations governing the Internet.” The prohibition would apply to both Congress and the Executive Branch but makes an exception to any rules dealing with national security.

Will Rep. Issa’s proposal make any difference if implemented? Any congressionally imposed legislative moratorium is a symbolic gesture and not a binding constraint since Congress is always free to pass another law later to get around an earlier prohibition. So, in that sense, a moratorium might not change much. Nonetheless, such symbolic gestures are often important and Issa is to be commended for at least trying to raise awareness about the dangers of creeping regulation of online life and the digital economy.

If policymakers really want to take a more substantive step to slow the flow of red tape, they should consider a different approach. Instead of (or, perhaps, in addition to) a two-year legislative moratorium, they should impose a variant of “Moore’s Law” for information technology laws and regulations. “Moore’s Law,” as most of you know, is the principle named after Intel co-founder Gordon E. Moore who first observed that, generally speaking, the processing power of computers doubles roughly every 18 months while prices remain fairly constant.

As I argued in a Forbes column earlier this year, we should apply this same principle to high-tech policy. With information markets evolving at the speed of Moore’s Law, we should demand that public policy do so as well. We can accomplish that by applying Moore’s Law to all current and future laws and regulations through two simple principles:

• Principle #1 – Every new technology proposal should include a provision sunsetting the law or regulation 18 months to two years after enactment. Policymakers can always reenact the rule if they believe it is still sensible.
• Principle #2 – Reopen all existing technology laws and regulations and reassess their worth. If no compelling reason for their continued existence can be identified and substantiated, those laws or rules should be repealed within 18 months to two years. If a rationale for continuing existing laws and regs can be identified, the rule can be re-implemented and Principle #1 applied to it.

This would be a more effective way to get Internet over-regulation under control than any temporary moratorium. Again, if critics protest that some laws and regulation are “essential” and can make the case for new or continued action, nothing is stopping Congress from legislating to continue those efforts. But when they do, they should always include a 2-year sunset provision to ensure that those rules and regulations are given a frequent fresh look.

We often hear the legitimate complaint that ‘law can’t keep up with the Internet.’ It’s time we do something to act on that sound instinct. As I noted in concluding that earlier Forbes essay, only by demanding that regulations be sunset on a regular timetable can we keep government power in check and ensure unnecessary and outdated regulations don’t derail America’s high-tech economy.

There’s a hearing going on as I write on a Louisiana bill (HB 569) that would create a new tax on the Internet bills of consumers, despite the fact that there’s a federal moratorium prohibiting it.

We just heard Attorney General James D. “Buddy” Caldwell say that this isn’t a “tax”, it’s a “fee.”  Louisiana is taking an interesting approach – HB 569 would impose a tax of 15 cents per month on ISP subscribers that would go to preventing and prosecuting Internet-based crimes against children.  AG Caldwell claims that it is merely a “usage fee”  — the price we pay for using the Internet.

But the Internet Tax Freedom Act explicitly sought to prevent the imposition of a tax that simply used different terminology. The Act defines a tax as:

(i) any charge imposed by any governmental entity for the purpose of generating revenues for governmental purposes, and is not a fee imposed for a specific privilege, service, or benefit conferred; or (ii) the imposition on a seller of an obligation to collect and to remit to a governmental entity any sales or use tax imposed on a buyer by a governmental entity.

Under this definition, a charge on Internet access is not like a fee imposed for recording a mortgage, for example. When you pay a recording fee, you pay for the costs you impose on the government for handling your transaction. If you were to pay a “usage fee” for law enforcement to deal with online safety, you’re paying for general services, something that law enforcement/government should be doing anyway to protect the public.States are cash-strapped right now. Louisiana is pursuing a worthy goal of trying to provide more resources for law enforcement for Internet safety. Taxing the Internet is just the wrong way to do it.

If Louisiana’s  law enforcement/criminal justice system needs more resources to pursue and control criminals, the state shouldn’t hesitate to re-allocate its revenue or even raise the taxes that already fund those efforts.  It’s absurd to tax ONLY Internet users when child predators do nearly all their evil in the physical world of school playgrounds and hotel rooms. Under the logic of the bill’s proponents, we should also be adding to the hotel tax, or to the cell phone tax since conversations occur on cell phones.

UPDATE:  The bill was deferred by committee vote. This usually means that the bill is dead for the session.