CAGW Challenges Sen Dorgan on Net Neutrality
CAGW Disputes Sen. Dorgan’s Remarks on Net Neutrality
WASHINGTON, April 27 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — Citizens Against
Government Waste (CAGW) today challenged Sen. Byron Dorgan’s (D-N.D.)
comments on the issue of net neutrality and warned against enacting any
type of legislation that would hurt growth and the free market on the
Internet.
Sen. Dorgan held a conference call with reporters on April 26, the
occasion of pro-net neutrality group SavetheInternet.com’s one year
anniversary. Sen. Dorgan said, “The Internet became a robust engine of
economic development by enabling anyone with a good idea to connect to
consumers and compete on a level playing field. The marketplace picked
winners and losers, not some central gatekeeper. That freedom — the very
core of what makes the Internet what it is today — must be preserved.”
“If net neutrality is enacted, Congress itself will become the
gatekeeper by imposing restrictive and unnecessary controls. Any attempt to
regulate the Internet would create an unneeded layer of government
bureaucracy on a technology that has thrived precisely because regulations
have been absent,” said CAGW President Tom Schatz.
In January, Sen. Dorgan reintroduced the misnamed Internet Freedom
Preservation Act (S. 215) in the Senate. Net neutrality would mandate that
Internet service providers carry every single piece of content and every
service available, regardless of cost or need. Content providers have
expressed concern that the ISPs would either block content or create
different tiers of online services. Such differential pricing occurs in
virtually all forms of commerce, such as charging more for faster delivery
of packages by UPS or Federal Express. Should net neutrality become law and
traffic on the Internet continue to skyrocket, the delivery of important
content, such as medical information, will receive the same treatment as
spam.
Editorial voices on op-ed pages as diverse as those of the New York
Times and Wall Street Journal have criticized net neutrality as a false
issue. Last June, the Washington Post editorialized, “The weakest aspect of
the neutrality case is that the dangers it alleges are speculative. It
seems unlikely that broadband providers will degrade Web services that
people want and far more likely that they will use non-neutrality to charge
for upgrading services that depend on fast and reliable delivery, such as
streaming high-definition video or relaying data from heart monitors.”
“Net neutrality is nothing but a solution looking for a problem. This
kind of aggressive law-making would violate the principles of both the free
market and common sense. Stepping in now could adversely affect taxpayers
and consumers by stifling the development of the high-speed Internet
services America needs to keep its economy growing and nation competitive,”
concluded Schatz.
Citizens Against Government Waste is a nonpartisan, nonprofit
organization dedicated to eliminating waste, fraud, abuse, and
mismanagement in government.
SOURCE Citizens Against Government Waste