The announcement of Julius Genachowski as President Obama’s choice to head the FCC is not a surprise. Genachowski helped guide Obama’s tech policy during the campaign and is a highly respected technology lawyer and venture capitalist. As this Wired magazine piece points out, the proponents of federal net regulations are thrilled with the choice as they anticipate an activist FCC under his tenure. It is still unclear at this point why, however, net neutrality regulations are necessary. There has been no serious market failure to which regulation proponents can point. The burden will be on Genachowski, should he choose to create and advance new regulations, to explain their necessity. The remarkably successful growth and evolution of the Internet has proceeded without a lot of top-down mandates from the federal government. The FCC can be a useful facilitator of dialogue between ISPs and content and application providers who rely on the network. But Genachowski would be wise to proceed slowly and cautiously.