The
latest atrocity in the ever expanding regulation of everything by the Obama
Administration is regulating the internet as a common carrier justified by enforcing
internet neutrality. The putative
purpose of the regulation is to make sure that all internet traffic is treated
equally. No company should be able to
buy a fast track for its traffic. The
problem is especially acute in “the last mile,” where local municipalities have
sold monopoly positions to cable and telephone companies which have jacked up
prices. If the problem is geographical
monopolies on the last mile, then the solution is a federal law that outlaws
them because they are an illegal local burden on interstate commerce. This
would be a use of the Commerce Clause as it was actually intended.
The solution is not to allow the
Feds to regulate the internet based on a law passed in 1934 for regulating
telephone companies as common carriers, which itself was based on common
carrier railroad regulation which was originally passed into law in 1887. The
Interstate Commerce Commission powers to regulate railroads bankrupted a lot of
them. Railroads were deregulated in 1980 and the ICC was abolished in 1995.
Jimmy Carter signed the bill in 1980 and Bill Clinton signed the 1995 bill. The
ICC was such bad news two Democrats signed bills to dismantle and kill it. Why
would we want to resurrect this mess for the internet?
As a side comment, a nice
Constitutional Amendment would be to make all laws expire in 50 years. If
Congress doesn't see fit to reenact them, they should be gone. We could avoid
80 year old laws being used as excuses to regulate us. Why 50 years, you might
ask? Because we might need Democratic
votes to get the 2/3 majority of votes in both Houses of Congress needed to propose the amendment.