Without Title II, is the Internet the new ‘Wild West’?
Without government regulation, some have argued, the Internet is like the Wild West.
The idea is to paint the Internet and the innovators who provide access to it, as living in an untamed and unregulated environment. If the innovators have free rein, then they will inevitably trample all over the individuals who use the Internet.
This analogy, though, is completely false. Innovators providing access to the Internet, along with forward-thinking entrepreneurs who created new services through the Internet, were subject to state and federal regulation before the Federal Communications Commission’s Open Internet Order of 2015. The OIO reclassified broadband services, or Internet access services, as Title II common carriers, subjecting them to federal government micromanagement. Before the OIO, the Federal Trade Commission, state attorneys general and state consumer protection agencies worked together to protect online consumers.