An interesting post by David Kravets over on Wired has summed up the very paradox that is being experienced in the US over the recently Federal Communication Commission’s (FCC) vote on Net Neutrality. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) favours Net Neutrality, but has recently said in a foundation blog that the FCC’s ruling opens itself up to regulate the Internet in many other and different ways.
And here is the paradox: how can the Electronic Frontier Foundation be in favour of internet regulation, but cannot support the agency that regulates the Internet? In a blog on their site, Abigail Phillips, an EFF staff attorney said:
“We’re wholly in favor of net neutrality in practice, but a finding of ancillary jurisdiction here would give the FCC pretty much boundless authority to regulate the internet for whatever it sees fit. And that kind of unrestrained authority makes us nervous about follow-on initiatives like broadcast flags and indecency campaigns. In general, we think arguments that regulating the internet is ‘ancillary’ to some other regulatory authority that the FCC has been granted just don’t have sufficient limitations to stop bad FCC behavior in the future and create the ‘Trojan horse’ risk we have long warned about.”
If the EFF wants the Net Neutrality (which is Internet regulation of a kind) then how can they not want the FCC to regulate it? Effectively, what the EFF is saying is by allowing the FCC to regulate the Internet around the issue of Net Neutrality, they are not sure what the unintended consequences are and what implications they might have on the Internet as a whole so the FCC shouldn’t manage Net Neutrality regulation. But the EFF still wants Net Neutrality. What?
The EFF is right in one way. By regulating for Net Neutrality – a power that the FCC doesn’t have unless Net Neutrality is law – then it is slippery slope for all other kinds of regulation. Basically the sky is the limit, or maybe I should say the cloud is the limit?
Recent Comments