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FCC Approves Net Neutrality Rules, Potentially a Massive Blow to Internet Freedom

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The Federal Communications Commission voted along party lines Thursday to approve sweeping changes to how it regulates the Internet, capping more than a year of noisy debate that sparked millions of public comments and drew the attention of President Barack Obama and congressional leaders.

The agency’s three Democrats voted to approve Chairman Tom Wheeler’s net neutrality order, which would treat broadband like a utility to ensure all Web traffic is treated equally. The commission’s two GOP members, Republican lawmakers and the nation’s telecom giants oppose the rules, saying they will dampen innovation and investment. AT&T has already threatened a legal challenge.

That shift incensed Republicans, who see the rules as drastic over-regulation and a federal government power grab. Ajit Pai, the FCC’s senior GOP commissioner, has said the plan could ultimately give the agency the authority to set rates for Internet service — a charge Wheeler and FCC officials have denied.

“The commission’s decision to adopt President Obama’s plan marks a monumental shift toward government control of the Internet,” Pai said at the agency meeting Thursday. “It gives the FCC the power to micromanage virtually every aspect of how the Internet works. It’s an overreach that will let a Washington bureaucracy, and not the American people, decide the future of the online world.?”

GOP lawmakers have been turning up the heat on Wheeler on net neutrality. They’ve launched investigations into what they see as inappropriate White House influence over the FCC’s decision making and offered an alternative legislative proposal that would institute weaker net neutrality rules and tie the FCC hands on future regulation of broadband. (Read more about why the FCC approves net neutrality rules HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

FCC Official Warns Obama-Backed Net Neutrality Plan Would Bring 'Immediate' Internet Tax

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Photo Credit: REUTERS

Photo Credit: REUTERS

Internet users would be forced to pay a new federal tax on their monthly bills if the government approves regulations recently endorsed by President Obama, a member of the Federal Communications Commission predicts.

Commissioner Mike O’Reilly addressed what’s known as “net neutrality” at a Washington seminar on Friday. He spoke after Obama backed stricter rules by calling for preventing service providers from charging more for speedier service and for regulating them like telecommunications companies under a decades-old law.

That law requires telecommunications companies to pay into the FCC’s “Universal Service Fund” — and would likely require the same of Internet companies. But O’Reilly says history clearly shows that the fees would quickly be “passed off” to customers, just like they are now on monthly phone bills.

“Consumers of these services would face an immediate increase in their Internet bills,” O’Reilly said Friday during the seminar held by the non-partisan Free State Foundation. “Let’s accept a truism: Consumers pay [the fund], not companies.”

O’Reilly, a Republican on the five-member commission, also quoted scholar and net neutrality guru Tim Wu in saying, “Ultimately, consumers always pay for everything, no matter what we say otherwise.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Corruption At The FCC? TV Execs Donate To Dem Lawmaker, Get Million-Dollar Rule Exception

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Photo Credit: REUTERS / Jonathan Ernst

Photo Credit: REUTERS / Jonathan Ernst

A single television station has been granted a significant exception to the Federal Communications Commission’s upcoming broadcast spectrum overhaul — a station whose operators made joint campaign contributions to a key lawmaker with oversight authority over the FCC.

House Energy & Commerce Committee Ranking Democrat Henry Waxman — who oversees the FCC — received more than $12,000 in campaign contributions from three television executives in danger of losing broadcast rights after their company missed a crucial agency deadline. The company was subsequently granted the sole exception to the FCC’s rule.

“The timing of the campaign donations is very suspicious,” a source at the FCC familiar with the spectrum deliberations told The Daily Caller. “It appears that you can buy special favors from the FCC worth millions of dollars by giving money to Democrats. Would the result have been the same if the company’s executives were Republican donors? I doubt it.”

In May the FCC finalized plans to hold a spectrum incentive auction, the goal of which is to free up and transition broadcast television ultra-high frequency spectrum space over to the growing mobile broadband services market.

Starting sometime in mid-2015, TV broadcasters will have the opportunity to sell spectrum back to the commission, which will then re-sell it to wireless carriers. Broadcasters choosing not to sell will be repacked (or moved to different spectrum) in order to stay in business.

Read more from this story HERE.

FEC Chair Warns of Chilling Regulations, Book Ban On Conservative Publishers

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

The chairman of the Federal Election Commission today blasted Democratic colleagues opposed to his effort to protect conservative media after they imposed rules on the publisher of Rep. Paul Ryan’s new book, opening the door to future book regulations — or even a ban.

“By failing to affirm this publisher’s constitutional right, statutory right, to disseminate a political book free from FEC conditions and regulations, we have effectively asserted regulatory jurisdiction over a book publisher,” warned Chairman Lee E. Goodman, one of three Republicans on the six-person FEC.

“That failure reveals a festering legal uncertainty and chill for the free press rights of books and book publishers to publish and disseminate political books free from government regulation,” he added.

His comments after the FEC OK’d Republican Ryan’s request to promote his new book, The Way Forward, were immediately and sharply rebuked by Democratic Commissioner Ellen L. Weintraub. “No one is banning books,” she said.

Weintraub also hit Goodman for suggesting “that we are motivated by partisan bias, which is really not appreciated and untrue. I want to categorically deny that.”

Read more from this story HERE.

FCC Quietly Kills Controversial Newsroom Study

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Photo Credit: victoriapeckhamThe Federal Communications Commission on Friday quietly canned its controversial study of American newsrooms, a week after putting the project on hold.

“The FCC will not move forward with the Critical Information Needs study,” an FCC spokesperson said in a statement. “The Commission will reassess the best way to fulfill its obligation to Congress to identify barriers to entry into the communications marketplace faced by entrepreneurs and other small businesses.”

The brief statement was put out late Friday afternoon. But it indicated the study in its current form was being killed off for good, amid threats by Republican lawmakers to eliminate it.

FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai, a vocal critic of the plan, said Friday he was “pleased” by the decision.

“In our country, the government does not tell the people what information they need. Instead, news outlets and the American public decide that for themselves,” he said.

Read more this story HERE.

Poll: Overwhelming Majority Believe News Monitoring Not the Government’s Job

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Photo Credit: TownHallBy now you’ve heard about the FCC “study” that would have put government bureaucrats into newsrooms all over the country in order to monitor how news is gathered. Luckily, that study was killed thanks to the work of conservative media and FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai, who exposed and spoke out against it.

Now, a new Rasmussen Report shows an overwhelming majority of Americans do not believe it is the government’s job to monitor news content.

Read more this story HERE.

Universities in FCC Newsroom Probe Have Close Ties to Soros, Got $1.8M in Funding

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The FCC may have suspended its invasion into American newsrooms, but the controversial “Critical Information Needs” study also has George Soros’ fingerprints all over it.

While disturbing, this should come as no surprise since Soros’ gave more than $52 million to media organizations from 2000-2010.

Two schools were working with FCC on the project, according to Byron York of The Washington Examiner. The University of Southern California Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism and the University of Wisconsin-Madison Center for Communication and Democracy, were tasked by the FCC with coming up with criteria for what information is “critical” for Americans to have. The FCC study would have covered newspapers, websites, radio and television, according to The Washington Post.

On top of the 1st Amendment problems with this proposal, the schools involved have strong ties to liberal billionaire George Soros’ Open Society Foundations and have gotten more than $1.8 million from since 2000.

The journalism programs at these schools have even more ties to Soros besides their funding, including faculty members writing for university-based publications allied with Soros-funded outlets.

Read more this story HERE.

Freedom of the Press? FCC Plan to Place ‘Researchers’ in Newsrooms

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Photo Credit: victoriapeckhamFirst Amendment: The FCC has cooked up a plan to place “researchers” in U.S. newsrooms, supposedly to learn all about how editorial decisions are made. Any questions as to why the U.S. is falling in the free press rankings?

As if illegal seizures of Associated Press phone records and the shadowy tailing of the mother of a Fox News reporter weren’t menacing enough, the Obama administration is going out of its way to institute a new intrusive surveillance of the press, as if the press wasn’t supine enough.

Ajit Pai, a commissioner with the Federal Communications Commission, warned this week in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that a plan to dispatch researchers into radio, television and even newspaper newsrooms called the “Multi-Market Study of Critical Information Needs” is still going forward, despite the grave danger it presented to the First Amendment.

Pai warned that under the rationale of increasing minority representation in newsrooms, the FCC, which has the power to issue or not issue broadcasting licenses, would dispatch its “researchers” to newsrooms across America to seek their “voluntary” compliance about how news stories are decided, as well as “wade into office politics” looking for angry reporters whose story ideas were rejected as evidence of a shutout of minority views.

Read more from this story HERE.

U.S. Senator Cruz Blocks Confirmation of New FCC Chairman

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Photo Credit: REUTERS/Jonathan ErnstRepublican Senator Ted Cruz, a conservative whose defiant stand against Obamacare helped prompt the U.S. government shutdown, has blocked the Senate from voting on the nomination of Tom Wheeler to be Federal Communications Commission chairman.

The Senate was scheduled to vote on Wheeler, a Democrat and telecom industry veteran, late on Wednesday. Cruz held up the vote over questions about the FCC’s power to enforce disclosures of who sponsors political television advertising.

“The Senator is holding the nominee until he gets answers to his questions regarding Mr. Wheeler’s views on whether the FCC has the authority or intent to implement the requirements of the failed Congressional DISCLOSE Act,” said Cruz spokesman Sean Rushton, referring to a failed bill meant to step up political disclosures.

“Mr. Wheeler had previously declined to give specific answers, but as he’s now expressed his readiness to revisit the Senator’s questions, the Senator hopes to communicate with him soon,” Rushton said.

If Wheeler cannot resolve Cruz’s concerns, Senate Democrats could force a vote on the nomination. Majority Leader Harry Reid would decided whether to take that action.

Read more from this story HERE.

FCC Contemplating Full Frontal Nudity, Use of the F-Word on Broadcast TV

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In a Public Notice this past week, the Federal Communications Commission announced that it is considering relaxing its indecency standards to allow broadcast of the F-word, as well as other presently-banned profanity, and full frontal nudity.

You can see the FCC’s Public Notice HERE.

The FCC’s purported excuse for rethinking its indecency standards is compliance with “vital First Amendment principles” as established by recent Supreme Court cases. It also wants to reduce its backlog of thousands of indecency complaints.

Essentially, the FCC is contemplating allowing pretty much any profanity as long as it is “isolated”; in other words, it can’t be “repetitive” or “use[d] in a patently offensive manner…”

Similarly, for nudity, as long as it’s isolated and “non-sexual,” the FCC is contemplating allowing it on the airwaves.

To add injury to insult, the FCC doesn’t seem to mind that the new indecency standards would be applied to all hours of broadcasting, even those most frequently watched by children.

As this is not a final decision, please submit your comments on these proposed changes to the FCC HERE. Enter 13-86 as the Proceeding Number and submit your comments.

UPDATE: Former FCC Commissioners Believe that the Use of ‘Redskins’ is Obscene and Should be Prohibited by the Agency

By Brooks Boliek. The Washington Redskins name, long accused by many of being an offensive moniker to Native Americans, may also be flat-out indecent, according to some former FCC officials and public interest advocates.

In a letter to Redskins owner Daniel Snyder, former FCC Chairman Reed Hundt, former Commissioners Jonathan Adelstein and Nicholas Johnson, and others contend that an indecency case could be made against broadcasters who air the offensive name.

“It is impermissible under law that the FCC would condone, or that broadcasters would use, obscene pornographic language on live television,” they write. “This medium uses government owned airwaves in exchange for an understanding that it will promote the public interest. Similarly, it is inappropriate for broadcasters to use racial epithets as part of normal, everyday reporting.”

Never using the team’s name, they chastise broadcasters for using a name that is equivalent to the “n-word.”

“XXXskin is the most derogatory name a Native American can be called. It is an unequivocal racial slur,” they write. “As The Washington Post’s Mike Wise pointed out, ‘America wouldn’t stand for a team called the Blackskins — or the Mandingos, the Brothers, the Yellowskins, insert your ethnic minority here.’” Read more from this story HERE.