FCC Unlimited Control OF WWW

On Wednesday the Biden Administration had their new Internet Equity Rules voted on by the Federal Communications Commission vote on whether they will take over the Internet by stealth rules. Guess which way the Commission voted?

"So last month, President Biden gave the FCC its marching orders. The President called on the FCC to implement a one-page section of the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (Infrastructure Act) by adopting new rules of breathtaking scope, all in the name of “digital equity.” For the first time ever, those
rules would give the federal government a roving mandate to micromanage nearly every aspect of how
the Internet functions—from how ISPs allocate capital and where they build, to the services that
consumers can purchase; from the profits that ISPs can realize and how they market and advertise
services, to the discounts and promotions that consumers can receive. Talk about central planning.
Needless to say, Congress never contemplated the sweeping regulatory regime that President Biden asked
the FCC to adopt—let alone authorized the agency to implement it. Nonetheless, the Commission will
vote next week, on November 15th, to put President Biden’s plan in place. A draft of the FCC order
implementing President Biden’s plan is available here. I oppose the plan for several reasons.
President Biden’s plan hands the Administrative State effective control of all Internet services and
infrastructure in the country. Never before, in the roughly 40-year history of the public Internet, has
the FCC (or any federal agency for that matter) claimed this degree of control over it. Indeed, President

Biden’s plan calls for the FCC to apply a far-reaching set of government controls that the agency has not applied to any technology in the modern era, including Title II common carriers. The closest analog would be the heavy-handed rules the FCC applied to the Ma Bell telephone monopoly during the height
of the New Deal era—a copper wire period of time when it was hard to distinguish between government
regulator and telephone provider.
But do not take my word for it. The text of the order expressly provides that the FCC would be
empowered, for the first time, to regulate each and every ISP’s:
● “network infrastructure deployment, network reliability, network upgrades, network
maintenance, customer-premises equipment, and installation”;
● “speeds, capacities, latency, data caps, throttling, pricing, promotional rates, imposition of late
fees, opportunity for equipment rental, installation time, contract renewal terms, service
termination terms, and use of customer credit and account history”;
● “mandatory arbitration clauses, pricing, deposits, discounts, customer service, language
options, credit checks, marketing or advertising, contract renewal, upgrades, account termination,
transfers to another covered entity, and service suspension."