Congress should consult experts and consider alternatives and make 100% sure that any step it takes to police the Internet doesn't change the Internet as we know it.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Congress may not get the Internet, but the Internet doesn't get Congress, either.
The important thing to remember with the Internet is that there are large companies that have an interest in controlling how information flows in it. They're very effective at lobbying Congress, and that pattern has locked down other communication media in the past. And it will happen again unless we do something about it.
The federal government seeks to control and regulate the Internet, but the last thing this Congress should be doing is trying to stifle public debate online.
The Internet is brittle and fragile and too easy to take down. It's a conduit for criminal activity. We need international treaties to prosecute the bad guys, but we don't have them.
The Internet has exceeded our collective expectations as a revolutionary spring of information, news, and ideas. It is essential that we keep that spring flowing. We must not thwart the Internet's availability by taxing access to it.
The question is not whether we want to keep this open, neutral Internet - we do, or should - but whether government rulemaking can give us the result we want.
For years, my colleagues and I - primarily Republicans but also some Democrats - have introduced legislation and written to the FCC asking the commission to cease attempts to regulate the Internet unless given the clear authority to do so by Congress.
I want to prevent us reifying 'the Internet' as something to be preserved like some people want to preserve the American Constitution as it was written.
The critical question is: How do we ensure that the Internet develops in a way that is compatible with democracy?
There is no Constitutional right to prey on others. The Internet is just a piece of technology, like the telephone. Society has the right to modify its uses.