 “Having them overseeing the Internet scares the sh*t out of me,” said Cuban at
the Code/Media conference hosted in Laguna Niguel, Calif., on Wednesday, one of
the largest technology conferences on the west coast.
“Net neutrality is just a demonization of big companies,” Cuban said. “That will
f— everything up.”
The serial entrepreneur is best known as one of the first billionaires of the
Internet age, having sold his website Broadcast.com to Yahoo in 1999, right
before the dot com crash. He has since become a well-known investor personality,
buying up stock for tech firms and purchasing the Dallas Mavericks NBA team in
2000.
His experience with start-up companies that rely on the Internet is the main
reason Cuban says he is opposed to the reclassification of Internet as a public
utility under Title II of FCC regulations, which will put certain restrictions
on Internet service providers as to how they manage content.
“No one starting a business even considers net neutrality in their business,
except for those that are religious about it and ISPs and networks that have to
deal with any uncertainty it introduces,” he said to the Washington Post in
November.
Cuban gave a similar rant a few months ago invoking the name of famed author Ayn
Rand, comparing the present battle with net neutrality to that of excessive
regulation on railroads and steel manufactures in her novel Atlas Shrugged,
lauded by conservatives, libertarians and government skeptics.
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 “In my adult life I have never seen a situation that paralleled
what I read in Ayn Rands books until now with Net Neutrality,”
tweeted Cuban in November. “If Ayn Rand were an up and coming author
today, she wouldn’t write about steel or railroads, it would be net
neutrality.”
He echoes the statements of FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai, who has seen
the plan and likened it to nation’s tax agency.
“It gives the FCC the power to micromanage virtually every aspect of
how the Internet works,” said Pai in a statement after the plan’s
release. “It’s no wonder that net neutrality proponents are already
bragging that it will turn the FCC into the ‘Department of the
Internet.’”
“For that reason, if you like dealing with the IRS, you are going to
love the President’s plan,” said Pai.
The final vote on the new rules proposed by FCC chairman Tom Wheeler
are expected to be passed Thursday.
[This
article courtesy of
Watchdog.]
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