It looks like the Federal Communications Commissions (FCC) is up to its tricks again, trying for the third time to regulate pretty much every aspect of the internet like an old-style telephone company.  Tom Wheeler, the FCC chairman, announced a 322 page set of new rules, but will not release it to the public.  Yes this is the most transparent administration in history—maybe not.  Another commissioner, Ajit Pai,  fortunately has at least been able to sound the alarm on the soon-to-be-law rules.  And they are not net-neutrality rules after all, but simply a giant government takeover of internet service to control it and its content, and, perhaps most important to the bureaucrats, to tax us through regulation.  So here is apparently how it will work.

At present there is virtually no regulation of internet.  No one seems unhappy about this, except perhaps the cable companies, who apparently had some role in the lobbying for rules.  The FCC had attempted twice before to impose rules but had been thwarted by the Federal courts.  But those rules had been implemented based on Title I of the Communications Act of 1934, a statute enacted in the days of monopoly telephone service.  Title II, modified by the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which Wheeler now wants to use to justify internet regulation, “banned companies from participating in ‘unjust or unreasonable discrimination’ when it came to providing phone services to customers.” (Malarie Gokey, Digital Trends, February 6, 2015).  For example, if you pay for faster service, you would get faster service.  But Section 201 of Title II goes much farther in bestowing power to the FCC.  In effect the internet would now be treated as if it were a regulated utility.  The FCC could regulate all or nearly all aspects of the Internet.  And it would do this with antiquated regulations intended to deal with land telephone lines.

Since the regulations have not been released yet, I don’t know the details. But I promise to get back when they are released on February 26.