THE FIFTH COLUMN / GUEST: AJIT PAI (CHAIRMAN, FCC)
https://fifthcolumn.podbean.com/e/eps-82-draft/
FCC Chairman Ajit Pai drops in to explain why he's returning the Internet to the dark ages of... 2015.
PLUS:
Draymond vs. Mark Cuban
The AOL-Time Warner instant messaging juggernaut
Janet Jackson's wardrobe and Stephen Colbert's c***holster
Why won't the FCC just let Slim Shady be?
http://reason.com/blog/2017/11/21/ajit- ... he-origina
Ajit Pai: ‘We Are Returning to the Original Classification of the Internet’
In a Fifth Column interview, FCC chair announces the beginning of the end of Title II regulatory classification of Internet companies, frets about the culture of free speech, and calls social-media regulation "a dangerous road to cross."
On this issue especially, we can all be thankful that neither that hag bitch nor any of the GOPe losers got elected last year, bet dat.With us back to the past, prior to the imposition of these rules in 2015, we had a free and open Internet. We were not living in some digital dystopia in which that kind of anti-consumer behavior happens. There was no market failure, in other words, for the government to solve. Going forward, the question then is, what should the regulations be? Now as you said, there could be some kind of anti-competitive conduct by one or a couple players. And to me, at least, the question is, how do you want to address that? Do you want to have preemptive regulation based on rules that were generated in the Great Depression to regulate this dynamic space, or do you want to take targeted action against the bad apples as they pop up?
And to me, at least, the targeted action is the better approach, for a couple different reasons. Number one, preemptive regulation comes at significant cost. Treating every single Internet Service Provider as a monopolist, an anti-competitive monopolist that has to be regulated with common-carrier regulation, is a pretty...that's a sledgehammer kind of tool. And so that has significant impacts, and we've seen some of those impacts in terms of less investment in broadband networks going forward.
But secondly, I think it also obscures the fact that we want to preserve a vibrant open Internet with more competition. And so to the extent you impose these heavy-handed regulations, ironically enough, you might be cementing in the very lack of competition, as you see it, that you want to address.
And so my argument has been, let's introduce more competition into the marketplace in order to solve that problem. We've been doing that by improving more satellite companies, getting more spectrum out there for wireless companies, incentivizing smaller fiber providers in cities like Detroit, to be able install infrastructure. That is the way to solve that problem. Not preemptively saying, "We are going to impose these rules on everybody, regardless of whether there is an actual harm right now."
It's a fucking great day for America!
