Sen. Cruz’s omission on ‘net neutrality’

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[Commentary] Let’s not be fooled by Sen. Ted Cruz’s harangue against “net neutrality” in his Nov. 14 Washington Forum commentary, “Log off the Internet, Uncle Sam.” Somehow, he forgot to mention corporate control, which is what net neutrality is all about.

Sen Cruz (R-TX) wants to be sure that Comcast, Time Warner and AT&T are given the opportunity to take more money from our pockets. These corporations want companies and people to pay them for faster searching on the Internet. This is why Google, Facebook and Amazon favor keeping the Internet free and open: It is essential to their businesses. No one controls the Internet; it is a web, decentralized. Net neutrality allows for all Internet traffic to be treated equally. But the big media corporations dislike that idea, so in addition to raising our rates for Internet access, they would like to charge us to search on the Web.

President Obama is right that, without net neutrality, we will pay more unless the Federal Communications Commission creates “a new set of rules protecting net neutrality and ensuring that neither the cable company nor the phone company will be able to act as a gatekeeper, restricting what you can do or see online.”


Sen. Cruz’s omission on ‘net neutrality’ Regulating the Internet threatens entrepreneurial freedom (read Cruz’s op-ed)