Necessary? Yes. Innovative? Hardly.
Ask the average person who has led the internet revolution, and they'll tell you its companies like Amazon, Apple, Google and Facebook, and the web powers a plethora of innovation at next-generation companies such as
these.
The telcos and cable providers, for their part, have leveraged the pipes they built for a previous era to lay new cable. That's pretty much it. Seriously, when was the last time a cable operator did anything innovative? Take away TiVo and we wouldn't even have DVRs. So no one could accuse them of "innovation." Well, no one smart, at least.
House Republican leaders sent Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Tom Wheeler a letter today urging the commission to drop consideration of new federal “net neutrality” regulations that would undermine a free and open Internet and hurt our economy at the same time.
Signed by House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA), House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), and House Republican Conference Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA), the letter states:
“We are writing to respectfully urge you to halt your consideration of any plan to impose antiquated regulation on the Internet, and to warn that implementation of such a plan will needlessly inhibit the creation of American private sector jobs, limit economic freedom and innovation, and threaten to derail one of our economy’s most vibrant sectors. At a time when technology businesses need certainty to innovate, this is not the time for the FCC to engage in a counterproductive effort to even further regulate the Internet.”
Got it? If you forbid internet service providers from charging extra to web-based companies to reach the public, then that harms innovation, because nothing is more innovative than being squelched by telcos because you aren't able to pay their access tax.
But my favorite part of that letter is the part about "threaten to derail one of our economy’s most vibrant sectors." Problem for Republicans is that no one in that vibrant sector of the economy agrees with them. Certainly not the venture capitalists who fund that innovation, and certainly not the companies who make the internet worthwhile in the first place. No one would be paying Comcast for broadband if there wasn't something non-Comcast on the other end to visit.
Republicans have aligned themselves with unpopular telcos and cable providers who want to squelch the free and open internet. No reason why Democrats should do the same.
(Bonus nutpick, below the fold.)
So that letter above was posted on the website of the Speaker of the House, speaker.gov. The first comment below it?
Mr. Speaker, Congress, & America, This is just another form of Obama's Democratic, Socialist, Agenda to Silence the Public. So people like me won't be able to tell the World that Barrack Hussein Obama aka ("BARRY SOETORO") is a "Habitual Lying", Liberal, Extremely Weak, Scandalous, Incompetent, Former Homosexual ("Obama has a "LIFETIME MEMBERSHIP" at "THE MANS COUNTRY GAY BATH HOUSE" in Chicago, Illinois"), Racist, Demagogue, Ideologue, Un-American, US Constitutional Law Breaker, Muslim Sympathizing, Phony, Dictating, Socialist, who is on a Mission to Destroy America & is Unable to Deal with Global Issues & Refuses to Acknowledge ("Global Islamic Extremist Terrorism/Terrorists") due to Obama being a ("Muslim Sympathizer"). ("MOST IMPORTANTLY"), Obama is the ("WORST") US President in American History and History will ("REFLECT") all of Obama's ("FAILED LEGACIES/POLICIES") to every American from ("NOW") until ("THE END of TIME").
PP DMC 33* aka Black Man "Airborne All The Way"
In other words, John Boehner's base.