The FCC is considering imposing a tax on Internet providers, according to a story reported in The Hill. The Internet has become a means for Americans to share information in a wide variety of formats to people anywhere else in the world. More and more, people seek information and ideas via the Internet, shop for goods and services and purchase those online, create videos and music that others can obtain on the Internet, and even post whole books for reading on the Internet.

Statists who believe that all human activity ought to fall within the purview of government have looked jealously at the Internet. State and local governments have sought to tax transactions taking place over the Internet because the proliferation of Internet sales has reduced the sales tax revenue of these governments. 

Federal pressure to reinstitute the Fairness Doctrine, although intended to affect only commercial broadcast media, could certainly be the thin edge of the wedge if statists later wanted to regulate all Internet sites to make sure that government evaluated “fairness” and “equal time” prevailed.

Federation taxation may be the most likely avenue for controlling the Internet. Two years ago in May 2010, the FCC discussed reclassifying the Internet as a telephone service. This regulatory, rather than congressional, proposal threatened to make Internet freedom subject to the whims of federal regulators.

In the federal court case Comcast v. FCC, the Federal Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia struck down the plan. These plans have never completely died and Robert McChesny told SocialistProject.ca a few years ago:

What we want to have in the U.S. and every other society is an internet that is not private property but a public utility. As the moment, the battle over network neutrality is not to completely eliminate the telephone and cable companies. We are not at the point yet. But the ultimate goal is to get rid of the media capitalists in the phone and cable companies and to divest them from control.

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