Tens of thousands of protesters rose up in Budapest, Hungary, earlier this year to protest a new government plan that they feared would limit free access to the Internet. Under a recently proposed bill, Internet users would be taxed at a rate of 150 Hungarian forint (62 cents) per gigabyte of data.
Government officials in Hungary point out that Internet providers, not customers, would be taxed. But opponents of the bill rightly argue that costs incurred by new taxes would inevitably be passed on to consumers.
Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s administration, which enjoys a two-thirds majority in parliament, has already developed an international reputation for its authoritarian inclinations, and the United States has criticized him accordingly.
The events in Hungary, however, are merely one manifestation of a global trend toward greater government control over the Internet. In a recent article for the Wall Street Journal, Gordon Crovitz explains how most countries at the 2012 International Telecommunication Union conference signed a treaty that will essentially force networks to split into different versions of the Internet depending on the country they are in. Traditionally, sites such as Google, Facebook and Amazon have largely operated without regard to national boundaries. Under the new agreement, they will face a tax when their content crosses international borders — not unlike how it used to be with long-distance phone calls.
Meanwhile, authoritarian countries like Russia, China and Iran are continually working to shut down unwanted websites hosted in places including Ukraine, Hong Kong and the United States. They are aiming to make censorship easier by giving their governments greater access to the back-end workings of the Internet. As Russian President Vladimir Putin said, they want to achieve “international control of the Internet.”
We may not be as far away from these authoritarian trends as we’d like to think. A push by progressives in the United States to implement so called “net neutrality” through regulation under Title II of the Communications Act of 1934 could undermine Congress’ consistent position against taxing the Internet.
Congress, to its credit, has passed laws designed to prevent levying taxes on the Internet, but by all indications, the FCC isn’t keen to abide by the spirit of the laws on the books. In a recent article for Forbes, former FCC Commissioner Harold Furchtgott-Roth explains how the agency could make the government far more involved in the nuts and bolts of Internet access by way of a very loose interpretation of Title II.
One such proposal under consideration would effectively classify Internet access services as “interstate telecommunications services” under Title II, which would allow the FCC to treat broadband access more like a public utility — effectively handing itself exclusive regulatory control over broadband access. Under this telecommunications classification, broadband providers would be required to pay FCC fees, which now stand at 16.1 percent.
This new fee would likely amount to the highest single tax increase on the Internet in America to date, and it is not unlike what is being proposed in Hungary. Simply put, it’s a tax on free speech and a step closer to the ITU’s international agenda to integrate the state into the free flow of information around the world.
As Crovitz points out, Silicon Valley once led the charge to keep the Internet free from regulation and taxation. Companies such as Mozilla warned just two years ago that the Internet “is just too fundamental to our lives to leave it to governments to decide its fate.” Yet now they are standing aside, largely silent, as international interests and foreign governments encroach on their capacity to do business and spread information freely around the world.
At a time when the Web is one of the few consistently bright spots in our sluggish economy and a refuge of free speech, we would do well to take a cue from the Silicon Valley of two years ago — and the protesters in Hungary — to keep new government regulations out of the digital revolution.
Erik Telford is senior vice president at the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity. Thinking of submitting an op-ed to the Washington Examiner? Be sure to read our guidelines on submissions for editorials, available at this link.
