How Net Neutrality Invites the Feds to Ignore the First Amendment & Censor the Internet

If the Federal Communications Commission had admitted the Internet offers communications capabilities that are functionally equivalent to the printing press, mail carriage, newspaper publishing, over-the-air broadcasting, and cable television combined, it would have been too obvious that classifying broadband Internet service providers (ISPs) as common carriers is unconstitutional.

Like all other means of disseminating mass communications, broadband Internet access is a part of the “press” that the First Amendment protects from common carriage regulation. The unprecedented restrictions imposed by the open Internet rules eviscerate the freedom of the press without regard to scarcity. In the Second Internet Order, the FCC expressly disclaimed any intent to find that ISPs have market power. It instead relied on the ideology of “gatekeeper control” to justify its total ban on the editorial discretion of ISPs. This ideology presumes that all content providers who wish to use a particular system for disseminating mass communications require a government-mandated right of free access to all other users of such systems at all times in order to survive, innovate, and compete.[6] Its corollary presumption is that the operators of mass media communications systems have no recognizable interest, constitutional or otherwise, in exercising editorial discretion.