U.N., FCC intensify efforts to regulate electronic speech

by Jerome Coursi
(c) 2010 RedAlert.WND.com 
-used with permission

The United Nations is now joining Obama administration and Democratic commissioners on the FCC in an attempt to regulate the Internet.

The U.N. is reacting to concerns of member governments, including the United States, that the Internet has made companies like WikiLeaks possible, while the FCC is more concerned about conservative news outlets on the Internet that are increasingly undermining government attempts to control the news through sympathetic mainstream media outlets.

What is at stake is the future of electronic free-speech rights, as governments around the world realize how much less control government authorities have with a robust and critical press able to operate freely on the Internet.

U.N. efforts to regulate Internet

Last week, itNews.com in Australia, reported that the U.N. is considering whether to set up an inter-governmental working group to "harmonize" global efforts by policymakers to regulate the Internet.

The U.N. claims authority to regulate the Internet under a U.N. Economic and Social Council resolution passed in July that invited the U.N. secretary-general to begin discussions on coordinating government efforts to regulate the Internet on a global basis.

Obviously, the U.N. is uncomfortable with anything like the Internet that the globalists cannot control.

FCC moves to regulate the Internet

The FCC is preparing in its Dec. 21 meeting this week to vote on a proposal called "net neutrality."

The Obama administration likes to portray the proposed 85 pages of "net neutrality" rules as a way to ensure no user will be shut out of Internet access because of the user's content.

In other words, under the leadership of Chairman Julius Genachowski, an Obama administration Democrat, the FCC plans to use free expression arguments to set up a structure where the FCC would be the ultimate arbiter of who gets broadband Internet access and who does not.

In proceeding to regulate the Internet, the FCC, under Genachowski's direction, is choosing to ignore a unanimous ruling of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit last April that ruled the FCC lacked the authority to regulate the Internet.

Congress seeks to block FCC on net neutrality rules

Last week, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, the ranking member of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, filed an amendment to an appropriations bill aimed at blocking the FCC from adopting net neutrality, the Washington Post reported.

Hutchison's amendment would stop the FCC from using public money to implement any rule that would regulate Internet traffic, according to Reuters.

Republicans are concerned that the FCC's net neutrality proposal is an attempt to get the FCC's foot in the door to wide-ranging government control, extending over not just Internet operating procedures, but ultimately over Internet content.

Incoming House Commerce Chairman Fred Upton, R-Mich., along with Communications Chairman Greg Waldren, R-Or., and Vice Communications Chairman Lee Terry, R-Neb., wrote to the FCC last week with their concerns that the FCC has not been transparent about its effort to regulate the Internet, the Hill reported.

They demanded Genachowski release all 85 pages of his net neutrality proposal before the FCC votes on the rules this week.

On Wednesday, a group of 29 Republican senators wrote their own letter to Genachowski, warning him that if the FCC goes ahead to vote net neutrality, they will actively work to repeal the rules in the next Congress, according to the Daily Caller.

"You and the Commission's general counsel have admitted in published statements that the legal justification for imposing these new regulations is questionable and has 'serious risk of failure in court,'" the letter said.

The letter went on to stress that Congress has not granted the FCC the specific statutory authority to regulate the Internet, stating, "Whether and how the Internet should be regulated is something that America's elected representatives in Congress, not the Commission, should determine."

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Jerome R. Corsi received a Ph.D. from Harvard University in political science in 1972. He is the author of the #1 New York Times bestselling books THE OBAMA NATION: LEFTIST POLITICS AND THE CULT OF PERSONALITY and the co-author of UNFIT FOR COMMAND: SWIFT BOAT VETERANS SPEAK OUT AGAINST JOHN KERRY. He is also the author of AMERICA FOR SALE, THE LATE GREAT U.S.A., and WHY ISRAEL CAN'T WAIT. Currently, Dr. Corsi is a Senior Managing Director in the Financial Services Group at Gilford Securities as well as a senior staff writer for WorldNetDaily.com.