Intellectual Property Law

Law Journal Succumbs to Doublespeak on Intenet Deregulation v. Regulation

The article by Shannon P. Duffy appeasing in Law.com’s
3rd Circuit Upholds FCC’s Deregulation of High-Speed Internet Access succumbs to the regulation/de-regulation doublespeak pressed by the Internet regulators. I would have hoped a law rag would have been sharp enough to avoid such gullibility.

This is not at all a ruling in favor of deregulation. To the contrary, it is a ruling authorizing private regulation of the Internet. Moreover, private regulation in this space is much more dangerous than government regulation because it works. The government can’t do much at all to regulate the Internet, thanks in large measure to the First Amendment and thanks in no small measure to the fact that the government does not have any physical control over the transport layer. But the major ISPs do have such control, and are not bound by the First Amendment. In short, this ruling says, in plain English, “Whereas the government may not and cannot regulate communications over the Internet that are protected from suppression by the First Amendment, we hereby free those of you who have the power to suppress freedom of speech to go ahead and do so.”

Full post as published by CopyOwner on October 19, 2007 (boomark / email).