Title II, Robert McDowell, And They Boy Who Cried 'Black Helicopter.'

[Commentary] I noted with some considerable interest the February 17 Wall Street Journal Op Ed by Robert McDowell, a former Commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission, and Gordon M. Goldstein describing how reclassifying broadband as a Title II telecommunications service will invariably lead to “the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), a regulatory arm of the United Nations” asserting jurisdiction over the Internet. As a consequence, McDowell warns us, the ITU will allow freedom-hating dictatorships such as Russia and China to take control of “Internet governance,” extend censorship to the Internet, and generally crush freedom-as-we-know-it. “The UN Black Helicopters will swoop down and carry off our Internet if we try to reign in carriers from abusing consumers and adopt real net neutrality” has become a perennial favorite for McDowell and some others.

Despite making the same wrong prediction about the ITU for the last 5 years, we will once again see Robert McDowell and the usual suspects singing backup that reclassifying broadband will serve the nefarious agenda of Russia, China and anyone else we don’t like by allowing the UN to swoop in with their black helicopters and carry off our Internet and crush our freedoms. Despite 5 years of false predictions and a wealth of evidence and debunkers explaining why what the FCC does on Title II has zero impact on what happens at the UN, people still take this argument seriously.