Seth L Cooper

In December 2017, the Federal Communications Commission adopted its landmark Restoring Internet Freedom Order that repealed the public utility-like regulations which were applied to broadband Internet service providers by the Obama Administration's FCC. The Restoring Internet Freedom Order's return to a light-touch national broadband Internet policy fosters free market competition and helps to secure the Internet's future. The FCC's action enhances consumer welfare and encourages economic investment and technological innovation by all the participants in the Internet ecosystem. Importantly, the FCC's decision also establishes a regulatory framework that ensures consumers are protected from anticompetitive conduct as well as from unfair and deceptive trade practices. In the context of offering a convincing defense of the FCC's Restoring Internet Freedom Order, this volume provides a wealth of information and key insights into the long-running debate surrounding "net neutrality" regulation. The selected writings in this Reader explore both legal and policy rationales that support the FCC's December 2017 action. They explain why the FCC's pro-consumer, pro-investment, pro-innovation approach to regulation of broadband Internet services that was adopted in the Restoring Internet Freedom Order should be preserved.

America needs a new communications law fit for the Digital Age. More than twenty years has passed since the last major revision to the Communications Act. Since then, the communications marketplace has been dramatically reshaped by increasing competition and technological convergence centered around Internet-based voice, video, and data services. Yet innovation and investment in high-speed broadband networks are constrained by regulatory restrictions that sometimes date back to the 1930s, or even earlier.The need for a modernized law is all the more pronounced given the Federal Communications Commission's historical reluctance to remove outdated regulatory restrictions. In the past, the FCC often has sought to regulate new digital communications services in competitive markets without clear statutory justification or sufficient economic analysis. Delay in adopting a modernized Communications Act runs an increasing risk of chilling innovation and investment, impeding market competition, and harming consumer welfare.A vibrant future for digital communications services and the Internet requires reform that is pro-innovation, pro-free market, pro-consumer, and consistent with the rule of law. Based on those guiding principles, #CommActUpdate - A Communications Law Fit for the Digital Age offers a roadmap for a comprehensive update of federal communications law. The book is comprised of six scholarly responses submitted by the Free State Foundation to an earlier congressional process considering an overhaul of the Communications Act, along with a Preface and lengthy up-to-date Introduction providing a wealth of background information and context. The book prescribes specific reforms for areas such as broadband policy and Internet oversight, competition policy, network interconnection, spectrum management, universal service, and video services regulation.