It's terrifying enough to think of congress today deciding the fate of the internet, much less the congress of 1996.
Well, at least the Internet in the US. Other countries have their own laws and regulations.
I fear you may be underestimating the United States government, especially when it comes to the Internet.
Treaty obiligations make some onerous US law viral.
We should stockpile modems. It seems we're going to need them...
The Congress of 1996 did more or less what technologists wanted at the time: told the FCC to not regulate the internet.
I'm excited to see what kind of crazy side-effects the stuff we the technologists of today are demanding (like net-neutrality) have
Any good idea you have today can be made into a bad idea later. See Alfred Nobel.
But what mjmahone17 is saying is that the FCC should label broadband providers (in my view: both wired and wireless) as common carriers which would undo the "information services" label put on them in 2002 (http://transition.fcc.gov/Bureaus/Cable/News_Releases/2002/n...)