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Ken Cuccinelli on Technology |
We need to develop better working relationships between state and local governments to ensure those highest priority traffic congestion and capacity problems are addressed first and that we have a comprehensive approach to addressing the transportation needs of each community. The transportation needs in Fairfax County are very different than the needs in Virginia Beach and the way to fix congestion in northern Virginia is very different than in Hampton Roads.
The principle of net neutrality states that the federal government should mandate that broadband Internet service providers (the companies that bring high-speed Internet into our homes) let all data flow at the same speed and charge all consumers the same price, regardless of how much of the Internet pipeline each consumer uses.
From a legal perspective, there was a very big problem with what the FCC did. A federal court had already told the agency that it had absolutely no authority to regulate the Internet. But the FCC DEFIED that order and attempted to move forward with regulations anyway.
Net neutrality advocates failed to take into account that ISPs owned the pipelines that got people on the Internet, which made this a private property rights issue, too. The ISPs invested billions of dollars a year to build their network pipelines and develop newer, faster technologies. Although we all wanted an open Internet where we could freely visit any site we wanted, we needed to remember that we were using someone else's property to get there. The government couldn't just seize that property through regulation to use it how it saw fit.
