How stopping
the Internet giveaway helped unite Trump, Cruz and GOP By Robert Romano, 9/26/16
“[Hillary] Clinton supports Obama’s
plan to hand over control of the Internet to an international community of
stakeholders, including Russia, China, and Iran. Just this week, [Donald] Trump
came out strongly against that plan, and in support of free speech online.”
That was Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) stating
that one of the reasons he had decided to back Donald Trump for president against Hillary Clinton was because Trump
had come out via a campaign statement on
Sept. 21 against an Obama administration plan to transition U.S. oversight of
the Internet’s domain name system to the international community.
Immediately
after the Trump statement Cruz tweeted,
“Appreciate @realDonaldTrump’s support of our efforts to keep the internet free.” To
which, Trump
campaign manager Kelly Anne Conway tweeted back, “And we appreciate @tedcruz appreciating @realDonaldTrump. Over to you, @jeffroe,” referring to Jeff Roe, Cruz’ former campaign manager.
Two days later, Cruz had endorsed
Trump, something almost nobody was expecting after such a bitter primary battle
between the two top vote-getters in the GOP primary. Americans for Limited Government
President Rick Manning noted that the Internet freedom issue had helped to
unite the Republican Party, stating, “Donald Trump doing a statement on the
Internet giveaway helped facilitate Ted Cruz’ endorsement of Trump just two
days later, in turn helping to unite grassroots Republicans nationwide in the
sprint to November.”
Manning urged further action by
Congress to actually stop the Internet giveaway, which is set to take place on
Oct. 1. “It would be tragic that an issue which unites Republicans would be
scrapped just to pass a bill that funds the Obama administration’s priorities,
including surrendering U.S. oversight of the Internet’s domain name system to
foreign powers and multinational corporations, creating an unaccountable global
monopoly and risking censorship of every American’s vital Internet freedoms.”
The problem is that as of right now,
the language in the continuing resolution that was going to block the Internet
surrender was stripped out by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.),
risking the fresh unity among Republicans.
What might have been a major victory
for Republicans in Congress in the closing stretch of the campaign may be
turned in a potential political buzz saw, where members will be asked to vote
for an unpopular continuing resolution that funds the Obama administration’s
priorities — and surrenders the Internet.
In the meantime, outstanding
questions about the Internet giveaway remain, as the
Department of Justice has stonewalled repeated requests from the House and
Senate Judiciary Committees on the antitrust implications and other legal
concerns of creating a global Internet
monopoly in the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Number (ICANN).
ICANN will continue bidding out
generic top-level domain names like .com, .org, and more as the world’s only
provider, and collecting hundreds of millions of dollars of exclusive fees
which one day could become a global Internet tax.
In the meantime, in 2012 in federal
court ICANN
argued that it was immune to antitrust scrutiny, stating “obtained the sole authority to delegate TLDs and select
registries through ‘its agreements with the U.S. government.’ … Put
simply, ICANN did not conduct its operations to unlawfully acquire
the authority to designate TLDs and select registries; thus, this authority
does not support name.space’s monopoly claim because the Sherman Act does not
punish firms whose monopoly position has been ‘thrust upon’ them.”
The
federal district court agreed that
“ICANN’s power to control which TLDs will be accepted into the DNS and the
entities that will act as registries for those TLDs was delegated to it by the
United States Department of Commerce. As a result, whatever monopoly
power ICANN may possess was ‘thrust upon’ it as the result of ‘historic
accident’ rather than the result of ‘willful acquisition.’”
Meaning, once the contract is let
loose, ICANN will likely again argue that is exempt from antitrust. If the
organization prevails, it will result in an unaccountable global monopoly over
the Internet, leaving no recourse for Americans when it results in censorship.
Right now, if the Commerce
Department approves changes to the root zone that result in censorship,
somebody could conceivably take the government to federal court for a facial
violation of the First Amendment. Post-transition, there will be no such
remedy. And that is the real risk of the Internet giveaway.
Hopefully, the newfound unity among
Donald Trump and Ted Cruz will give Congressional Republicans the courage they
need to ensure that Internet freedom is preserved. In the least kick this issue
into the next administration to take a close look at all of these outstanding
issues. But that’s only important insofar as Republicans hold majorities in
both houses of Congress.
This is one issue that should unite,
not only Republicans, but every member of Congress who wants to perform due
diligence in ensuring that the Internet remains free and open. Because once we
give oversight of the Internet away, we may never get it back.
Robert
Romano is the senior editor of Americans for Limited Government.
http://netrightdaily.com/2016/09/stopping-internet-giveaway-helped-unite-trump-cruz-gop/
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