Regulating the Media

Here’s a great opinion piece on Internet regulation from City Journal by Brian C. Anderson:

Net neutrality would swiftly become a bureaucratic nightmare. “Neutrality regulation might as well have been labeled the ‘Telecom Lawyer & Lobbyist Full Employment Act of 2006’ because it would generate mountains of regulation and litigation in coming years,” says Theirer. “You simply can’t put something as amorphous as ‘digital nondiscrimination’ mandates on the books and then expect that regulators won’t abuse it—and that means competing teams of lawyers, consultants, and economists will be hired to try to figure it all out. When they don’t, the lawsuits will start flying.”

…The biggest reason to be thankful Congress resisted net neutrality: the scary prospect of Ted Kennedy and Nancy Pelosi trying to stamp out broadband traffic “discrimination.” Some of the most vocal neutrality advocates, including Save the Internet campaign organizer Free Press, relentlessly agitate for regulation of other media to fight “corporate interests” and guarantee “fairness.” The deeper agenda at work in the net neutrality debate, insufficiently noticed by most commentators, is the Left’s zeal to get a hold of the new media, which have given conservative voices powerful outlets, shattering the liberal monopoly over news and opinion outlets—and regulate those outlets out of existence, so we can all go back to the days when the New York Times and other elite liberal institutions set the agenda.

Net neutrality was brought to you by the sponsors of Outfoxed, the MSM doesn’t seems to find that remarkable.