FCC Commissioner: 'The Internet Is The Greatest Free Market Success Story In History'
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- With the Trump administration's FCC again reconsidering ending net neutrality, Chairman Ajit Pai wants to set the record straight on what he describes as the "lazy talking points" that are out there about the plan.
"If you actually look at the record, and are interested in facts, you will see a very different story that is told on the pages of the plan that I put out there," Pai told The Rich Zeoli Show on WPHT, as a response to celebrities and critics who have gone after him on Twitter. "I welcome any contributions to the debate, but if you are simply peddling misinformation, like this is the end of the internet as we know it, then it is only fair for me to be able to point out the flaws in your argument."
When asked to respond to charges that ending net neutrality only benefits large internet service providers, Pai said, "I would love for them to go to some of the small ISPs that I have personally gotten to know and understand what their business problems are and why these regulations are bad."
Former President Bill Clinton "got it right in 1996, saying government regulation of the internet was not the right thing, and I think that model serves us well today," Pai said.
When asked about what changed since then, Pai said, "Literally nothing other than political considerations. President Obama instructed the FCC to adopt these regulations even though the internet wasn't broken. The internet is the probably the greatest free market success story in history, and the last thing the federal government needed to do was to fix something that wasn't broken."
