Free-Market Community Reacts to Latest Video Franchising Legislation

Prominent members of the free-market movement joined together today to send a letter concerning recent draft video franchising reform legislation to Chairman Barton and members of the Telecommunications and the Internet Subcommittee, as well as Speaker Dennis Hastert and Majority Leader John Boehner. In the letter, FreedomWorks, The American Conservative Union, The Discovery Institute, Competitive Enterprise Institute, the National Taxpayers Union, and the Council for Citizens Against Government Waste acknowledge positive, market-oriented steps that the draft takes in the area of reforming the currently cumbersome and complex video franchise regime, however points out significant room for improvement particularly in the area of net neutrality.

In this regard, the group wants to raise awareness about vague language that could potentially open the Internet to uncertainty, overregulation, litigation, and privacy violations. In the letter dated March 31, 2006 the group commented: “After all, these are questions that directly bear on Internet privacy, regulation, the property rights of Internet Service Providers, and of course, how federal and state laws are enforced.”

As written the language opens the way for any activist FCC to easily expand the scope of its regulatory authority and exercise unprecedented levels of regulation and control of the internet. The letter referenced concerns with the regulator powers granted the FCC: “While the legislation bars FCC from “rule-making”, it also gives this political institution discretion to unpack the nebulous language mentioned above. In doing so, the FCC could circumvent the bar on rule-making, and in the process, exercise complete discretion over the Internet. At the very least, the vague terminology could lead to an explosion of litigation, which would, in turn, deter capital investments in technology, thwart the evolution of the Internet.”

To view the letter in entirety, please visit www.freedomworks.org