Demonstrators at FCC push Obama-era “net neutrality” censorship with “Ban Drudge” and “Ban Infowars” signs
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WASHINGTON, D.C. – A group of Alt-Left demonstrators has already begun protesting in front of the FCC headquarters in Washington, in advance of next Thursday’s vote scheduled to repeal the Obama-era “net neutrality rules.”
Holding signs that say, “Ban Drudge,” “Ban Infowars,” and “Ban Breitbart,” the protestors are supported by Soros-funded Astroturf “public interest” firms that seek to preserve the ability giant gateway portals like Google, Facebook, and Twitter to censor conservatives, while demanding only that the Internet Service Providers (ISPs) that connect users to the Internet follow rules that all Internet content providers are treated equally.
On May 15, Elizabeth Harrington reported in the Washington Free Beacon that members of the alt-left connected to DisruptJ20, with a history of participating in violent protests, have targeted the neighborhood where FCC chair Ajit Pai lives, leaving leaflets on the doors of Pai’s neighborhood and planning a “vigil to save the Internet” in advance of Thursday’s scheduled FCC vote.
Under the Obama administration, the Democratic Party supported effort funded by Soros and Google, spending $72 million since 2006 to impose government control of the Internet under the guise of “net neutrality,” co-opted the language of an “open Internet” by seeking to regulate the ISPs as “common carrier” trucks or buses under Title II of the Communications Act.
At the same time, Soros and Google defined the Obama-era “net neutrality” rules to allow the Internet gateway portals, including Google, Facebook, and Twitter, to design “Fake News” rules, to bar conservative content deemed by the Google, Facebook, and Twitter censors to be somehow or other “unacceptable” for Internet broadcast.
On April 3, President Trump signed a bill repealing the “Internet Privacy” rules that the Obama-controlled FCC had passed in October 2016, laying the groundwork for the imposition of draconian privacy rules that would only apply to broadband competitors of Google, Facebook, and Twitter, leaving the three Internet gateway giants free to extend “Fake News” censorship bans to “protect the privacy” of leftists claiming abuse from conservative and libertarian news content.
Ajit Pai, elevated to FCC chair by President Trump, is pursuing a strategy designed to remove Internet regulation from the FCC, to transfer the regulatory responsibilities to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), where anti-trust actions could be brought against Internet giants like Google, Facebook, and Twitter that have the size and economic power to censor alternative conservative news sites, including Drudge Infowars.com, and Breitbart, as well as dozens of smaller conservative and libertarian Internet news outlets.
Infowars.com has warned that Google is running a silent campaign to make sure President Trump appoints as permanent chair of the FTC a candidate the tech giant is certain will never press an antitrust investigation of the company, after previously lobbying for a Republican favorable to Google to be nominated by President Bush as the third GOP FCC commissioner.
Although the FTC is authorized to have five commissioners with no more than three of the same political party, at present the FTC has only two commissioners: Maureen K. Ohlhausen, a Republican appointed by President Obama in 2010, who President Trump elevated to be Acting Chair on Jan. 25, 2017; and Terrell McSweeney, a Democrat, appointed by President Obama and sworn in on April 28, 2014.
Behind the scenes, Google is quietly pushing for Ohlhausen, a life-time career bureaucrat, to be appointed permanent FTC chair.
Google calculates that Ohlhausen’s Republican views favoring robust open-market competition in a deregulated environment will be enough to get President Trump to appoint her as permanent FTC chair.
But Google’s true calculation is that Ohlhausen as FTC chair would protect Google from being forced to undergo renewed antitrust inspection.
Google knows that Ohlhausen dissented to an FTC settlement reached in 2013 to an antitrust complaint that involved various Google business practices, with the settlement requiring Google to share patents on critical standardized technologies needed to make popular electronic devices, such as smart phones, laptops and tablet computers.