FCC Chairman: This Is How We Will Ensure Net Neutrality(wired.com)

    The policy matter is not whether copyright holders 
    should receive recompense for their products (they 
    should), but whether legislation to protect that right 
    is aircover to perpetuate old practices at the expense 
    of new networks. There is no doubt there are honest-to-
    God Web pirates operating in China, Russia, and 
    elsewhere who are stealing copyrighted product. These 
    pirates should be stopped. But SOPA’s effort to 
    accomplish this – which also just happened to strengthen 
    the hand of content companies in other regards – applied 
    concepts more applicable to the command and control 
    networks of yesterday than to the open access networks 
    of today. 

    The power of the Internet is its lack of centralized 
    control. Its distributed architecture means the network 
    functions at the edge rather than at a central point.
    That edge activity, in turn, creates what the SOPA 
    supporters were trying to constrain: access they can’t
    control. While its goal of stopping piracy is laudable 
    and important, SOPA’s practical effect was to
    restructure through law the functionality of the 
    Internet.

    It is not the role of any government to “manage” the 
    Internet. The Internet has flourished precisely because 
    government has so far refrained from regulating this 
    dynamic and essential cornerstone of our economy. I 
    would rely primarily on innovation and market forces, 
    not bureaucrats, to shape the Internet and maximize its 
    economic, social and scientific value.

    Specifically, the FCC’s “Net Neutrality” regulation 
    represents an Obama campaign promise fulfilled on behalf 
    of certain special interests, but ultimately a “solution” 
    in search of a problem. The government has now interjected 
    itself in how networks will be constructed and managed, 
    picked winners and losers in the marketplace, and 
    determined how consumers will receive access to tomorrow’s 
    new applications and services. The Obama Administration’s 
    overreaching has replaced innovators and investors with 
    Washington bureaucrats.