Coming just days after Professor Peter Becker of George Mason University claimed that a solar storm is coming and could be an “Internet apocalypse,” the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) enacted new rules intended to eliminate discrimination in access to Internet services, a move which regulators are calling the first crucial U.S. digital civil rights policy.
The rules package empowers the agency to review and investigate instances of discrimination by broadband providers to different communities based on income, race, ethnicity, and other protected classes. The order also provides a framework for the FCC to crack down on a range of digital inequities, including the disparities in the investment of services for different neighborhoods and the digital divide, a term used to describe a complete lack of internet access.
FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr blasted the new plan, calling it a Soviet-style government power grab. Carr opposed the order, which would give the “Administrative State effective control of all Internet services and infrastructure.”
It will affect everything from how internet service providers (ISP) allocate capital and]where they build to the services that consumers can purchase, from the profits that ISPs can realize and how they market and advertise services to the discounts and promotions that consumers can receive. Most disturbing is that it does not have to be “discrimination” as generally understood but rather “disparate outcomes,” meaning all internet infrastructure must produce perfect equity or be penalized by the federal government.
Meanwhile, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Space Weather Prediction Center expects the solar storm to peak between January and October 2024. It will happen just in time for a new round of election interference.
The Old Blog in the Desert 