Op-Ed

[Commentary] Admittedly, “infrastructure” might not immediately come to mind when you think “Federal Communications Commission.” But maybe it should. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai often begins and ends his speeches talking about infrastructure investment. The analogy may be getting shop-worn, but in this day and age, who can doubt that reliable high-speed broadband networks are as crucial a component of the nation’s infrastructure as last century’s interstate highways.

Eliminating public utility-like regulation in the Restoring Internet Freedom rulemaking is an important part of the FCC’s focus on spurring greater investment by our nation’s internet service providers. And the pending proposals to encourage more investment in high-speed wireline and wireless broadband networks by eliminating, or at least curtailing, unnecessary or costly regulatory impediments have the same objective. Spurring private sector investment by internet service providers in high-speed broadband networks should be viewed as a key part of the nation’s infrastructure program. And the FCC should be viewed as a key infrastructure agency.

[Randolph J. May is president of the Free State Foundation]

[Commentary] The Supreme Court recently agreed to hear Carpenter v. United States, a case on whether the Fourth Amendment protects historical cell-site records. In this post, I want to focus on a small but potentially important part of the Carpenter litigation: How should an originalist Justice vote in the case?

There are many different flavors of originalism, of course, and originalist arguments often can be used to argue for different outcomes. But in this post I want to discuss one originalist argument that I think is significant. Let’s start with the obvious: The Framers could not have imagined a world of cell-site records. And the original public meaning of the Fourth Amendment is open to a wide range of interpretations at different levels of generality. With that said, the text of the Fourth Amendment does have an important clue about what the Fourth Amendment was originally understood to mean that might be important to the Carpenter case.

[Kerr is the Fred C. Stevenson Research Professor at The George Washington University Law School]

[Commentary] Network neutrality rules are needed to protect individuals against cable companies and other giant internet service providers that want to put their own profits ahead of the public interest in a free and open internet where anybody can communicate and compete on an equal playing field. They want network neutrality protections removed so they can tilt the rules of the game in their own favor, and in favor of other giant internet companies that have the deep pockets to pay them for special treatment online.

Network neutrality protections are good not only for consumers, but they’re also vital to ensure competition and innovation in all the tens of thousands of competitive marketplaces that depend on an even playing field—such as travel services. They are also vital to ensure that everyone can communicate without interference by those who run the communications network.

[Jay Stanley is senior policy analyst for the Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at the American Civil Liberties Union.]

[Commentary] The Federal Communications Commission’s proposed rollback of its 2015 Open Internet Order has put the term “net neutrality” back in the political zeitgeist. The phrase itself is more strategic marketing than precise meaning, but understanding that all it really means is heavy-handed government regulation of the internet makes it clear that net neutrality policy is bad for broadband consumers.

The net neutrality debate has little to do with making the internet open for users to go where they wish online. Americans have always enjoyed that liberty, even before the Open Internet Order was passed. Internet service providers have every incentive to provide that freedom to their customers.

[Jessica Melugin is an adjunct fellow with the Competitive Enterprise Institute in Washington]

[Commentary] Over the last month, the Federal Communications Commission received 2.6 million public comments critical of Chairman Ajit Pai’s plan to roll back President Obama’s "network neutrality" rules. This outpouring of public sentiment must be evidence of participatory democracy at it best, right? Not quite. A sizable percentage of these comments appear to be fake. What the net neutrality comment debacle underscores is that the Internet age may mean the collapse of the public comment process, at least for significant public policy issues.

Sophisticated bots and automated comment platforms can create thousands and thousands of comments from senders who may or may not be real. Most rulemaking pertains to subject matter that is less widely-watched than net neutrality, and usually concerns only a small sliver of the public. The public comment process has some virtues and should continue. It is time to recognize, however, that for rulemaking over issues on the scale of net neutrality, with entrenched and vocal participants on both sides of the aisle, the public comment process has become a farce.

[Peter Flaherty is president of the National Legal and Policy Center.]

[Commentary] The innovation economy needs competition, unfettered access for consumers and innovative flexibility. Working together, Congress should surprise the country, remove the politics from setting broadband internet standards and get something done most Americans can agree on.

[Jamal Simmons is a political analyst and a co-chairman of the DC-based Internet Innovation Alliance (IIA).]

[Commentary] Network neutrality, adopted by the Federal Communications Commission during the Obama presidency, was the first step in transitioning the internet into a government-run monopoly. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai is intent on returning the internet back to its roots, cutting out unnecessary regulations - most of which have been foisted on the American people over the past two years. Recently, the FCC voted to overturn the net neutrality rules. While the commission was voting, a group of liberal activists were protesting inside with signs demanding the government shut down popular alternative websites like Breitbart and the Drudge Report.

[Greg Young is the nationally syndicated host of the radio show Chosen Generation]

[Commentary] Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai’s reliance on "real" economists in Econ Cloud Cuckoo Land (ECCL) to reverse Title II reclassification is going to get slammed in the courts big time. I would hope that real world common sense would prevail, and Pai would back away from his ill-considered proposal. But real world common sense is scoffed at in Econ Cloud Cuckoo Land.

As long as Pai continues to prefer Econ Cloud Cuckoo Land over the actual real world, we can expect him to continue to pursue policies that don’t work in the real world and don’t pass muster in court.

[Harold Feld is the senior vice president at Public Knowledge]

[Commentary] Prime Minister Theresa May’s political fortunes may be waning in Britain, but her push to make internet companies police their users’ speech is alive and well. In the aftermath of the recent London attacks, PM May called platforms like Google and Facebook breeding grounds for terrorism. She has demanded that they build tools to identify and remove extremist content. Leaders of the Group of 7 countries recently suggested the same thing. Germany wants to fine platforms up to 50 million euros if they don’t quickly take down illegal content. And a European Union draft law would make YouTube and other video hosts responsible for ensuring that users never share violent speech. The fears and frustrations behind these proposals are understandable. But making private companies curtail user expression in important public forums — which is what platforms like Twitter and Facebook have become — is dangerous. Outraged demands for “platform responsibility” are a muscular-sounding response to terrorism that shifts public attention from the governments’ duties. But we don’t want an internet where private platforms police every word at the behest of the state. Such power over public discourse would be Orwellian in the hands of any government, be it May’s, Donald Trump’s or Vladimir Putin’s.

[Keller is the director of Intermediary Liability at Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society, and previously was associate general counsel to Google]

[Commentary] Despite Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai’s claim that he supports Network Neutrality, the proceeding he opened in May attacks not only the legal authority underpinning the rules — which is absolutely vital for enforcing them — but seeks to overturn these protections altogether. If Chairman Pai gets his way, Net Neutrality will be gone for good and people will be left with only the empty promises of big cable companies to protect them online.

This administration has gone after so many crucial consumer protections that we have fought for, from ending exploitative prison-phone rates to banning your internet service provider from selling your personal data. President Donald Trump isn’t working for anyone besides the corporate lobbyists and millionaires that are filling his administration. We’ve fought and won this battle before and we can do so again. But it’s going to take all of us working together. I will do my best working with my colleagues in the Senate to protect internet freedom, but we’ll need all of your voices engaged and ready to fight.