Network Neutrality Redux and the Return of Falsehoods and Disinformation

Despite vowing to eschew involvement in the latest Network Neutrality drama, I cannot sit back and let stand the resumption of the distorted gospel preached by the anti-network neutrality crowd.  This group has legitimate criticisms, many of which I have tried, via hundreds of law review pages—to analyze, and even endorse, in specific instances. Network neutrality regulation will not create a suffocating Internet rate regulation regime. The Democratic majority has clearly exempted broadband internet access from Title II common rate regulation. By the way, Title II still explicitly applies to wireless telecommunications, like cellphone service, and no one can credibly claim that carriers are severely constrained by overpowering Federal Communications Commission oversight. Network neutrality orders have always applied light-handed regulatory oversight. Title II of the Communications Act does not impose some atavistic, old school “public utility” regulation. Despite the growing efforts of the Supreme Court to prevent regulatory agencies from responding to changed circumstances, the FCC has frequently recalibrated its Title II regulatory toolkit over time. The FCC does not have to insist on an either/or dichotomy,  Nothing in the Communications Act mandates this.  We have had to tolerate decades long regulatory toggling between telecommunications service and information service, because the FCC cannot wrap its head around the reality that convergence requires a nuanced and admittedly more complicated blend of definitions.