Public Affairs
Many firms can write that press release and place a media call.
What you need is a team that thoroughly understands your issue and grasps policy and political nuance.
Our team has experience in government and business and contacts with a broad community of scholars, pundits and commentators.
We draw upon these resources to persuade media and policymakers and build alliances with credible voices to develop support for our clients’ issues.
Simon Says…Regulate the Internet
When the Federal Communications Commission issued its new “network neutrality” regulations last month, most of us were thinking about how this new layer of government was going to affect Internet freedom here in the United States. Most telecomm policy experts were not, however, talking about how other countries around the world might follow in our footsteps.
Bartlett Cleland, Director of the Texas-based Institute for Policy Innovation wrote this week about how countries like Venezuela are reassured by the FCC’s recent regulations, which they can now use to justify greater controls over their own communications systems.
Just days before the FCC made its ruling, the Venezuelan Parliament changed its laws in order to give President Hugo Chavez the power to regulate Internet content by implementing heavy regulations on Venezuelan-based service providers. Specifically the country’s ISPs are now required to block broad categories of material that, for instance, “fosters unrest among the citizenship or disturb[s] public order,” and “refuses to recognize the government’s authority.”
In other words, the Venezuelan government has found a way of regulating all content. As Cleland concludes, “Venezuela needed little provocation for its continued oppression, especially from the U.S.” Nevertheless, Chavez can relax “knowing that the U.S. has joined Venezuela in the company of governments who regulate the Internet.”