For related articles and more information, please visit OCA’s Politics and Democracy page.

Net Neutrality — the principle that protects Internet users’ free speech rights — is censorship.

Did you get that? You did if you happened to be reading the Wall Street Journal’s editorial pages. Former Federal Communications Commissioner Robert McDowell recently wrote a screed claiming that Net Neutrality supporters have taken a turn “toward undermining free speech.”

And McDowell is not alone. Since the FCC announced its plan to make a new ruling regarding the open Internet, Washington has been overrun with phone and cable lobbyists whose sole mission is to convince the agency that real Net Neutrality rules are downright un-American.

Industry-funded think tanks have argued that any enforceable effort to protect the open Internet denies phone and cable companies their First Amendment right “by compelling them to convey content providers’ messages with which they may disagree.”

That these industry voices have mangled the intent of the First Amendment should come as no surprise to anyone witnessing their campaign to undermine the open Internet. (It’s a campaign that includes Comcast and Verizon spending millions on a PR campaign that claims they are for Net Neutrality while spending millions more on lobbyists to push Washington to destroy it.)

The Right to Censor

According to many industry spokespeople, the Net Neutrality protections that millions of Americans are fighting for are an “attempt to turn the Internet into… a federally regulated public utility.” In the view of McDowell and others, Net Neutrality is bad for free speech because it takes away broadband providers’ unalienable right to censor you.

As an FCC decision on the matter grows nearer, the rhetoric from lobbyists will become even more extreme.