Net Neutrality and Running with Sissors

Up next, an amazing quote from someone who probably ran around swimming pools with sissors growing up. The quote is by Jeffrey Eisenach, chairman of the consulting firm CapAnalysis Group LLC, who was speaking at a Progress and Freedom Foundation (which Eisenach co-founded) event.

From TechDirt:

"Net neutrality is, in fact, the theft of property rights from [broadband] infrastructure providers. It's simple regulatory theft -- the transfer of ownership from one group of people to another group of people."

This is wrong on so many levels, it's hard to believe that anyone actually pays good money to PFF for their thoughts on things -- until you realize that the companies paying PFF that good money are those broadband infrastructure providers who don't want network neutrality at all.

First of all, that statement ignores that plenty of broadband infrastructure was built up as a government backed monopoly, using our tax dollars that was later privatized with the promise that it would be kept open and neutral since we all paid for it.

However, if PFF wants to talk about "theft," perhaps they'd like to comment on all of the regulatory subsidies granted to the broadband providers over the years, in exchange for promised services that they never delivered (and probably never will)? That seems a lot more like theft than simply requiring that monopoly infrastructure plays fair with services that run on that infrastructure."