Brian Anderson pens an important op-ed in Investor's Business Daily today demonstrating the real threat to political speech should Barack Obama win the election. The campaign already has a track record of seeking to intimidate and silence critics. Quite frankly, we at American Thinker are concerned about our friends in talk radio, as well as by the specter of so-called net-neutrality, a euphemism as pernicious as "fairness doctrine" and "refundable tax credit." Anderson explains:
Obama, like congressional Democrats, also wants to regulate the Internet, the only other medium in which the right does well, via its influential bloggers.
The means here: something called "network neutrality." Neutrality, if enacted, would give government overseers at the FCC the power to ensure that Internet providers treated equally all the information bits surging across the Web's "pipes" - its cables, fiber optics, phone lines and wireless connections.
This measure makes zero economic sense. Broadband providers want to manage more actively - and thus profitably - those information bits. They'd like to offer, for instance, new superfast delivery for sites or users willing to pay more (not unlike how FedEx speeds delivery of packages for a fee), or other new services such as online video or telephony.
Network neutrality would render all that illegal. But why, then, should broadband investors keep building the Web infrastructure needed to keep pace with surging use? Where's their financial incentive?
Yet if that infrastructure isn't in place soon, the vast amount of data pouring online will begin to slow the Web to a crawl, many experts believe. Needless to say, neutrality also will be a gold mine to telecom lawyers, who'll have their hands full figuring out what constitutes "digital discrimination."
Hat tip: Ed Lasky and Lee Cary
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