I keep harping endlessly on the fact that Free Press wants centralized, nationalized media in America, and one logical consequence of their Internet plans is to have single payer Internet. Well, this isn’t a theoretical problem. Finland just implemented it. Quoth Boy Genius Report:
Thanks to a new law that comes into effect today, every single citizen of Finland now has a legal right to a wired broadband connection with a minimum speed of 1Mbps.
Do we see how this might hinder investment and innovation of Internet technology? No? Well, here’s some more evidence of how wrong it is that the FCC is going along the Free Press Communist path. Stratecast projects alarming revenue declines for ISPs should “strict non-discrimination” restrictions on service innovation and maintenance be enforced by the FCC. Eyeballing their chart, it appears to go from about $65 billion to $20 billion in only five years. When the industry has that much less money coming in, we users of the Internet will see that much less investment in the bandwidth and routing expansion and innovation we’ve come to rely upon, and will rely upon even more as we stream video over the Internet at an increasing rate.
Stratecast suggests that very narrow regulations (which I should add would be far, far less than what Title II deem and pass reclassification will inspire) would result in only a small decline in revenue growth, leaving the industry at about $180 billion instead of $220 billion (again, just eyeballing their chart on page 15 of the report). This is why we need the Congress to act, stopping the FCC and putting in careful, narrowly tailored changes to the Telecommunications Act if we want narrow regulation of ISPs at all.
We can do it, too. Free Press is beginning to lose allies. The Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation International has sent a letter to the FCC disavowing its association with Free Press or any of its front groups, asking Free Press to remove the JRDF name from any of Free Press’s websites or other materials. Heh.
Moving on to an organization I haven’t talked about much, the roving eye of BigGovernment.com has focused in on the Sunlight Foundation. Sunlight pretends to be nice and centrist, favoring open government through the power of new technology, but BG.com sees more than that: They’re now spreading the Free Press line attacking ISPs who oppose the radical Free Press Net Neutrality plan, while ignoring the constant consultations Free Press and organizations allied with it themselves get to make.
Oh and lookie at what else BG.com found:
It turns out, the Sunlight Foundation’s “research” is funded by organizations who just happen to have a direct interest in net neutrality regulations.
Look at record:
Google, which strongly favors government “neutrality” regulation, has given Sunlight nearly $100,000 during the past two years. And Google executive Kim Scott sits on Sunlight’s board of directors.
George Soros is also exposed as lurking back there. It’s time anyone on the right started taking a good, hard look at Sunshine before having anything to do with the group going forward.