Los Angeles Times

Michael Hiltzik: FCC chairman defends net neutrality by substituting ideology for history

The world of the internet, as seen by Federal Communications Chairman Ajit Pai, is simple. Regulation is bad, deregulation is good. Conservatives are victims, and liberals reign supreme. And history doesn't matter.

That's the impression one gets from a remarkable speech Pai delivered this week to the R Street institute, a conservative "free market think tank."

In defending his campaign to repeal FCC regulations governing network neutrality, Pai got the history of regulation and the history of internet technology wrong, repeated his cherry-picked version of internet economics, and took irrelevant potshots at some of his critics in the information industry.

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