In recent months, U.S. Congress has repeatedly tried to draft a bill through which it can somehow regulate the internet on its own terms, its efforts resulting in bills such as SOPA. To conclusively end any such efforts in near future, a Republican Congressman has now proposed a two-year ban on any internet-related bills.
Darrell Issa is a Republican from California and he has been surprisingly supportive of internet freedom. Issa is among the very few Congressmen who seem to have some sense of how internet works. He has also been a vocal opponent of the notorious SOPA bill.
Issa has now posted online the draft of a bill that he is calling ‘Internet American Moratorium Act of 2012.’ The draft proposes something rather extra-ordinary: it aims to create ‘a two-year moratorium on any new laws, rules or regulations governing the Internet.’
In other words, the bill aims to place a ban on creating any new federal regulations to regulate the internet for the next two years. Commenting on this bill, Issa wrote, “Together, we can make Washington take a break from messing w/ the Internet.” A spokesperson for him said that “After SOPA and PIPA (the Senate’s similar Protect Intellectual Property Act), it became very clear that we needed a cooling-off period to figure out a better way to create policy that impacts Internet users, job creators and all Americans.”
Whereas this may appeal to a proponent of open internet at first sight, not many have taken kindly to it. Issa posted the draft on Reddit where a significant number of users criticized it for being inadequate and bit too simplistic. Most users are apparently of the view that the government need not necessarily be barred from regulating the internet.
Rather, many Reddit comments demand that Congress must devise more intelligent regulations which may benefit the internet ecosystem at large, not disrupt it to serve a few sectors.
Source: Reddit
Courtesy: CNN
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