
Steve Forbes: Don't let states disrupt Trump admin's 'net neutrality' rollback - linsomniac
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/10/fcc-net-neutrality-rollback-getting-disrupted-at-state-level-steve-forbes-commentary.html
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tzs
> The 80-year-old so called Title II regulations were originally used to
> regulate railroads and then the Ma Bell telephone monopoly of the 1930's.
> [...] The lunacy of applying old, rotary-dial telephone regulations on
> something so dynamic is self-evident.

The 2015 Open Internet Order:

• Bans paid prioritization

• Bans ISPs blocking their customers from accessing legal internet content

• Bans ISPs degrading access to legal content

Which of these does Forbes think is "old, rotary-dial telephone regulations"?

Forbes argument is like saying that the First Amendment should not apply to
web sites because the First Amendment is 200 year old newspaper regulation.
That would be incorrect because it confuses speech, which is the subject of
the First Amendment, with the technologies that may be used to transmit
speech.

He's making the same error with net neutrality. He's confusing the content and
purposes of communications (which is largely the same now as it was in the
1930s) with the technology that happens to be used for that communication.

He seems to have overlooked that the 2015 Open Internet Order specifically
excluded over 700 provisions from the Title II rules from applying to
internet. That's where all the things he fears would hurt investment were.

We _know_ that light-touch Title II regulation, such as that of the 2015 Order
is compatible with investment, because that's how wireless voice has been
regulated for over 20 years.

I'm kind of surprised he didn't also include the old Republican talking point
about the 2015 order being 400 pages of regulations. In fact, it was about 8
pages of actual regulation. That document the FCC issued also included
hundreds of pages of analysis to explain _why_ they made the regulations they
did and responses to the points raised during the public commentary period.

