Halfway to Wrecking Internet Freedom

[Commentary] We’re at the midpoint between the Obama Administration’s March 2014 announcement that it would end US protection of the open Internet and September 2015, when the change is supposed to happen. During this time, there has been no progress finding an alternative for protecting the Internet from authoritarian governments. That’s no surprise -- except to Obama Administration officials who apparently never considered how hard it would be to replace US stewardship. The Obama Administration is so uncomfortable with American exceptionalism that it violated the cardinal rule of good government: If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Under U.S. protection, the Internet became the wonder of the modern world. The US should retain stewardship over the Internet and postpone any fixing of the Internet until there is a problem to fix.