“Net Neutrality:” Regulating Like It’s 1934
A lot has changed since that not-so-halcyon year 1934.
So why are the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and “Net Neutrality” advocates attempting to regulate the Internet under laws drafted for the technology of that era?
In 1934, World War I was not yet known as “World War I.” A short film featuring The Three Stooges made its debut. The first soap box derby was held. Germany and its quirky mustachioed chancellor Adolf Hitler signed a non-aggression treaty with neighboring Poland, while the young Soviet Union joined the League of Nations.
Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis and Donald Sutherland wouldn’t be born for another year. That cumbersome dinosaur we now know as Social Security did not even exist.
Meanwhile, the fledgling Roosevelt Administration, in its first full year in office, expected to make short work of the nation’s economic slump with a hubristic frenzy of government activity. Instead, what became the Great Depression festered through the end of the decade, prolonged by the very bureaucratic policies devised to end it. As part of that hubristic frenzy, the FCC was created June 19, 1934 as a successor to the Federal Radio Commission.
Harold
