This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Friday, June 28th, 2019.

I'm Caleb Brown.

New legislation in the Senate, authored by Missouri Republican Josh Holly is aimed at regulating

online platforms for speech. Cato Institute Vice President John Samples

says it amounts to licensing providers of free expression and is inconsistent with the First Amendment.

We spoke last week.

Describe what Josh Holly has introduced and what, at least in his view has spurred it?

Well, the title of the bill is Stop the Internet Censorship Act of 2019.

So this gives you an insight into his interest.

He is much concerned.

Indeed, he ran for office in Missouri, ran for the Senate and succeeded

with the issue of alleged conservative bias by platforms, like Fleif's book, Google, and so on.

So this is his first foray into writing a bill to deal with such conservative bias or alleged

conservative bias.

So that's part of it.

Now for libertarians, you know, I think we can describe this bill

quite briefly. It is a bill that gives a federal government agency the right of life or death over businesses.

Indeed, some of the largest most successful businesses in the world.

It's as simple as that. it's got other problems that other things but the fact of the matter is

this bill would give that kind of claiming ownership of the airways, which then were said to be scarce and had to be allocated fairly

by the federal government. The Federal Communications Commission was charged with that. And then you had

the fairness doctrine on top of that. That is part of the way you got your license

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