The Internet, which generated some $300 billion in revenue last year, should continue to be free from government regulation, the Federal Communications’ Office of Plans and Policy (OPP) said Monday in a 21-page report.
At first blush the study, prepared by Jason Oxman of the OPP’s Advanced Communications unit, appears to conflict with a report issued by the Federal Trade Commission earlier in the year. In that report the FCC said that although government controls may be needed, they should only be enacted as a last resort if industry self-regulation, which it strongly endorsed, does not work out.
While the FCC report makes no mention of industry self-regulation or taxes on Internet sales, it does assert that the government should not use the possibility of future problems to impose any controlling regulations on the Internet. Instead, it recommends the government “continue its oversight [of the Internet] to ensure that market forces do not fail or are otherwise unfairly manipulated by in appropriate behavior by entities with market power.”
Without providing an industry-by-industry breakdown of how it determined that the Internet generated $300 million in revenue last year, the report predicts that amount will double in a year, driven by market forces, investment and competition without government intervention.
Noting that the Internet “is rapidly changing the way Americans do business,” the report points out that: there are more than 6,000 companies providing consumers with access to the Internet; more than 80 million Americans are plugged into the Internet which so far has generated some 1.2 million jobs.
Last year President Clinton signed a bill into law that protects the Internet from any new taxes, federal, state or local, for three years pending the result of a government study into the situation.
Last month that panel released an Ernst & Young study calling the impact of Internet taxes as “minimal” on state and local governments.
