Phil Kerpen

August 21, 2010

YOUR AUG. 17 editorial “After Google-Verizon fizzle, FCC should force Net neutrality’’ correctly noted that broadband Internet has been unregulated since at least 2002, when the Federal Communications Commission settled the status of cable modem service. In truth, the decision not to regulate the Internet goes back to at least 1998, when the FCC, under the Clinton-appointed chairman, William Kennard, said that “classifying Internet access services as telecommunications services could have significant consequences for the global development of the Internet. We recognize the unique qualities of the Internet, and do not presume that legacy regulatory frameworks are appropriately applied to it.’’

You suggest that the FCC should upend more than a decade of successful Internet policy and reclassify the Internet as a regulated public utility, subject to pervasive regulation. Such regulation, however, could destroy private investment, limit competition, and lead us to a government-controlled Internet in which blocking and censoring could come as soon as we have a presidential administration that deems them expedient.

If Congress chooses not to act, that should be taken as evidence that the American people are happy with the Internet as it is, not used as an excuse for the FCC to invent vast new authority to act without Congress.

Phil Kerpen
Vice president for policy
Americans for Prosperity
Washington

Boston Globe Link

Saturday, May 29, 2010

Ced Kurtz ("TechMan: Despite Ads, Government Doesn't Want To Control Net," May 23) accuses me of "paranoid nonsense" for arguing that pervasive economic regulation of the Internet will risk content regulation. But in a world of Internet-as-regulated-public-utility, competition will quickly give way to regulation as a model of control, and regulators are subject to political pressure.

Do we think the Internet should be designed and managed by Washington bureaucrats? Or do we want to continue with a privately-owned, competitive Internet?

Updated May 14, 2010
By Phil Kerpen - FOXNews.com

The Obama administration and its friends at the Federal Communications Commission thought they could impose sweeping new Internet regulations without anybody other than far-left, Netroots activists like the fringe group Free Press noticing. They failed.

Americans for Prosperity and many free-market allies have blown the whistle and are now educating the vast majority of Americans -- who are happy with the unregulated Internet as it is -- about the threat posed by regulation.

Read the rest at FOX Forum.

Fight back at www.NoInternetTakeover.com.

By Phil Kerpen | Published: 05/11/10 at 12:01 AM

Despite the protestations of Federal Communications Chairman Julius Genachowski that he has found a “third way” forward on regulating the Internet, the only place his path will lead is to a tightly-regulated, government-utility Internet.

Chairman Genachowski promises that, while classifying the Internet as a regulated-utility phone system, he will also waive some of the requirements that would otherwise apply—a process known at the FCC as regulatory forbearance. But forbearance doesn’t solve the problems associated with reclassification, and in fact could exacerbate one of the central ones—uncertainty.

Read the rest at Daily Caller.

Listen to a related KerpenCast here.

Fight back at our new website: www.NoInternetTakeover.com

If FCC Chairman Genachowski announces his intention to reclassify the Internet as a telephone system, he will be reversing 30 years of precedent

Updated May 06, 2010
By Phil Kerpen - FOXNews.com

As I have repeatedly warned and noted on www.ObamaChart.com, when Congress blocks the Obama administration, the White House always finds a way to get around the normal policy-making process and pursue its agenda by other means. Today’s reclassification assault on the Internet is the latest—and perhaps the most egregious—example.

Read the rest at FOX Forum.

Listen to a related 2-minute KerpenCast here.

Click here to tell Congress to stop the FCC.

Thursday, April 29, 2010
Phil Kerpen

As we’ve seen on health care, cap-and-trade, bailouts, and overspending, thousands of Americans who were previously able to go about their lives without worrying about politics have stepped into the breach to defend a free-market system that’s under assault. Most Americans simply do not support the Obama administration’s attempts to “fundamentally transform the United States of America.”

One issue on which the Left was really supposed to have the grassroots edge is so-called net-neutrality regulation, a top policy priority of the vaunted Netroots. Leading the charge is the Marxist (don’t take my word for it, take theirs) group Free Press, whose goal is to convince government to step in and “free us” from private ownership and control of television, radio, newspapers, and, most important, the Internet.