IPUrbia

Now, in addition to Congress and the FCC, the FTC is angling to jump into the Internet regulation fray. As Drew Clarke at GigaOM reports,

The FTC usually gets press for investigating gasoline, drug or tobacco companies. But every decade or so, the FTC also makes a bid for jurisdiction over the Internet.

It’s an odd move for the FTC, since it is the traditional realm of the FCC. Still, their angle on the matter is even more surprising, since it adds nothing to the hands-off FCC.

What is truly bizarre about this turf grab, however, is that the FTC apparently wants power so that it, too, can do nothing about net neutrality.

“I start by admitting my surprise at how quickly so many of our nation’s successful firms have jumped in” – i.e. eBay, Google and Microsoft – “to urge the government to regulate,” FTC Chairman Deborah Platt Majoras said when she announced her Internet Access Task Force in August.

..Majoras repeated the caution at February’s event: “Policymakers should be wary of regulation that are clothed in terms of protecting consumers but that in practice would hamper competition, while benefiting only certain vested interests.”

Yikes. Perhaps the real competition won’t be for the privilege of regulation through inaction, but for the dubious honor of sounding as inept and clueless as possible during the process. “certain vested interests” is not the usual turn of phrase for what I’d largely guess to be, well, almost everyone involved in the Internet except for the ILECS, cable companies, and their sponsored supporters.