A  member of the Federal Communications Commission who previously opposed the so-called “net neutrality” regulations adopted by bureaucrats recently – and already under court challenge like so many previous related rules – says he foresees a future where rule-makers will want to regulate websites based on political content.

The comments from FCC member Ajit Pai were reported by CNS News and came from his appearance at an annual “Right Online” conference in Washington over the weekend.

He also said, according to CNS, that his opposition to the Obama-backed rules had produced harassment for not only him, but also his family.

“I can tell you it has not been an easy couple of months personally. My address has been publicly released. My wife’s name, my kids’ names, my kids’ birthdays, my phone number, all kinds of threats [have come] online,” he said.

He said the changes reclassify Internet providers as “utilities” and make them subject to all related regulations.

See what’s about to happen in the U.S., in “Shut Up, America! The End of Free Speech.”

That means the future, he said, isn’t pretty.

“I could easily see this migrating over to the direction of content. … What you’re seeing now is an impulse not just to regulate the roads over which traffic goes, but the traffic itself,” he warned. “It is conceivable to me to see the government saying, ‘We think the Drudge Report is having a disproportionate effect on our political discourse. He doesn’t have to file anything with the FEC. The FCC doesn’t have the ability to regulate anything he says, and we want to start tamping down on websites like that.’”
WND long has reported on the pressure growing from the government to create the possibility of more and more regulation over speech, the Internet and more.

The FCC actually has adopted so-called “net neutrality” rules in the past, and they have been struck down by the federal courts each time.

Many are expecting the same result with the Obama administration’s latest move.

“This is very likely strike three for the FCC,” wrote Scott Cleland, a policy adviser in telecommunications for the Heartland Institute, shortly after the federal agency’s vote a few weeks ago. “Their arbitrarily partisan, Rube Goldberg legal theory teeters on top of a foundation of falsehoods and a wholesale rejection of many years of FCC findings of fact and bipartisan precedents.”

He said the FCC’s decision “to regulate the Internet like a utility under Title II is the most sweeping FCC decision ever and the mother of all FCC over reaches.”

“The FCC has ignored the legal guidance of the court that twice overturned the FCC before, and is now asserting vastly more unbounded authority over the Internet than the court has twice said the FCC does not have,” he said.

The FCC vote was three Democrats for the Web limits and two Republicans against.

The criticism of the FCC action came from a broad range of fields.

Ted Baehr, a legal scholar and chairman of the Christian Film and Television Commission, said the rules “will destroy innovation, progress and freedom on the Internet.”

He said the claim that the rules are necessary to prevent larger Internet providers from charging high fees isn’t logical, because the new rules themselves are expected to lead to more government taxes and fees.

He said that if the federal bureaucracy is allowed to control the Internet, “the soft tyranny under which we now live will harden into a real tyranny where liberty will rapidly become a dim memory.”

Matthew Glans, a senior policy analyst at Heartland, said Title II reclassification of the Internet “is at its core a naked power grab by the Federal Communications Commission that feared its own irrelevance and was grasping at any means to maintain its power.”

“The Internet is not broken,” he said, “It is a vibrant, continually growing market that has thrived due to the lack of regulations that Title II will now infest upon it.”

He said Title II regulations are “archaic throwbacks which are ill-suited to today’s dynamic Internet and broadband markets.”

“The FCC’s attempts to ‘fix’ the Internet, in the name of net neutrality, will only serve to suppress broadband development. When Internet service providers are barred from properly managing the networks they spent billions of dollars to develop, the profit incentive to build new networks is lost and consumers lose,” he said.

“Take a close look at your land line and cell-phone bills, laden with taxes and fees. Your Internet bill is next,” he said.

Added Jim Lakely, also of Heartland: “Say goodbye, America, to the Internet you have always known. The most innovative and vibrant economic sector in human history will now become as responsive to consumer demands as the regulated airlines of the 1970s – and all to solve a problem that doesn’t exist.”

CNS reported that Pai previously co-authored a commentary with former FEC Chairman Lee Goodman warning of content regulation plans.

“Is it unthinkable that some government agency would say the marketplace of ideas is too fraught with dissonance? That everything from the Drudge Report to Fox News … is playing unfairly in the online political speech sandbox? I don’t think so,” Pai said.

“The First Amendment means not just the cold parchment that’s in the Constitution. It’s an ongoing cultural commitment, and I sense that among a substantial number of Americans and a disturbing number of regulators here in Washington that online speech is [considered] a dangerous brave new world that needs to be regulated,” he concluded at the time.

He subsequent told CNS that there also could be a huge new tax burden on the Internet.

WND carried the report when the U.S. Telecom Association – which represents companies including AT&T and Verizon – filed a legal challenge against the FCC rules.

In a commentary at Fox News, David Asman wrote, “Of all the government interventions by the Obama administration, the plan released Thursday by the Federal Communications Commission to regulate the Internet is the worst.”

He acknowledged Obamacare is “massive and is clogging one-sixth of the economy.”

“But even before Obamacare, government had a huge imprint on the health care industry with Medicaid and Medicare. Also, regulations on pharmaceutical and insurance industries led to their energies being focused as much on pleasing government bureaucracies as curing illnesses,” he said.

“But the Internet is young, fresh, alive and untainted. The FCC’s plan to muddy the pure waters of the Internet pollutes the one free flow of information on the planet. And what hurts as much as witnessing the pollution of the Internet with bureaucratic interference? With the exception of the Republican FCC commissioners, most are being blasé about the whole thing.

“Make no mistake. The greatest tool for freedom of expression to come along in our lifetime is in danger. One cannot have genuine freedom of expression with a government monitor, an overseer, a censor prepared to immediately shut down any ‘threats’ to the state.”

Former U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, said unless someone steps in, “a federal agency now claims the power to regulate the Internet.”

He said the adoption of the FCC rules on the Internet “represents the largest regulatory power grab in recent history.”

Yes, folks, we have to continue to fight for our free speech.  The millenniums did not realize when they voted this person into office that he was only using them and now look what he has done to them.  A debt they will never be able to pay –  which put them on their knees – just where he wants them.

kommonsentsjane