Here are some links to Net Neutrality, which has been argued about long before Obama. I’ve thought that the absence of “net neutrality” is what would *control* the Internet, rather than the current maintaining of it.
From Tim Berners-Lee (invented the World-wide Web in 1989)
http://dig.csail.mit.edu/breadcrumbs/node/144
Daniel J. Weitzner, Principal Research Scientist
MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
The Neutral Internet: An Information Architecture for Open Societies
http://dig.csail.mit.edu/2006/06/neutralnet.html
General Wikipedia article on it...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_neutrality
A Net Neutrality FAQ
http://www.timwu.org/network_neutrality.html
A Google company statement on it...
http://www.google.com/help/netneutrality.html
Brief Wall Street Journal article on it...
http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20090402-713158.html
An older CNN article — Keep the Internet neutral, fair and free
http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/06/09/newmark.internet/
That’s sort of a starter on it... LOL...
Thanks for those references but, in my opinion, many good- sounding and plausible reasons can be made for increasing government regulation and control. But it’s not only a matter of (mis)interprestation but the law of unintended consequences. The government is very adept at choosing titles and descriptions of legislation that, once examined, prove to be the very opposite of what they purport to be. For example, the “Fairness Doctrine.” Great title! Who could possibly be opposed to “fairness?” We need only remember, for example, how the Supreme Court has distorted the “interstate commerce” clause of the Constitution as an excuse to regulate nearly everything in the nation! - even though this is clearly a violation of original intent. In other words, the words and the underlying reality and intentions can be two entirely different things. I think as a general rule that government regulation - barring a near-universal agreement that it’s necessary to rectify some specific evil - should be avoided. We’ve seen what has resulted otherwise in our insanely litigious society.