Republican presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz has spoken out against the government’s regulation of the Internet through net neutrality in a video message Breitbart Tech can exclusively share with readers.

“That will end, and that will end immediately,” Cruz declared when asked if he would continue to allow the Internet to be classified as a public utility if elected president.

https://youtu.be/kHjAK5vReAI

“The Internet has been this extraordinary entrepreneurial haven,” Cruz explained. “The internet has really changed this country.” He described the challenges small businesses faced in creating new ventures before the Internet: “What the Internet enabled is millions and millions of people, with little to no capital, to start their own businesses.”

It took out all the middle men, and what you saw was actually millions of people who had previously found it hard, if not impossible, to create a small business — minorities, African-Americans, Hispanics, single moms, people with disabilities — who were suddenly able to, you know, “I can at home start a business, and the Internet gives me the tools,” so that the barriers to entry for a small business were reduced dramatically.

“Now the Internet from its beginning has been tax free,” he continued. “And even better, it’s been regulation free. Now nothing drives government bureaucrats and regulators and politicians crazy more than something they can’t get their grubby little fingers on.”

“Obama is salivating to regulate the Internet,” Cruz explained. He argued that by classifying the Internet as a public utility, the FCC would force people to “go to government regulators to get permission to launch some new website, to do something novel, on the Internet. That is lunacy.”

Cruz also emphasized that “the Internet has been a haven for free speech.” He admitted, “It’s wonderful, sometimes terrifying, often amusing — who knew cats could do the things they do? — but what it does is destabilize the power centers.” He noted that Dan Rather “lost his job because bloggers in pajamas fact-checked him and caught him lying.”

“That’s what the Internet does,” he stated. “It empowers people.”

Cruz described net neutrality as “Obamacare for the Internet.” Beyond arguing that it would allow the government to regulate “prices and terms of sale on the Internet, deciding which websites are OK and which are not,” Cruz noted that another component is the Obama administration “trying to give the Internet away,” turning over control to “an international body of stakeholders, such paragons of free speech as Russia and China.”

“We’re reliving the 1970s: Jimmy Carter gave away the Panama Canal, and Barack Obama is trying to give away the internet,” Cruz argued, before noting to great applause, “I mean, after all, Al Gore invented it!”

“If I am president, we will keep the Internet entirely free of regulations, entirely free of taxes,” Cruz concluded. “No net taxes, no net regulations, leave the Internet free and open to the American people.”

Cruz joins a chorus of Republican candidates who have all spoken out against net neutrality, including Sen. Rand Paul, Sen. Marco Rubio, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Carly Fiorina, and Jeb Bush, in videos recorded for the nonprofit organization Protect Internet Freedom.

Protect Internet Freedom, which boasts 1.6 million members, told Breitbart Tech: “We believe a unanimous consensus on the importance of protecting real Internet freedom, unfettered by government interference, sends a powerful message that we won’t stand by and allow Washington to turn the vibrant empowering Internet into a neutered government agency.”

Noah Dulis is the Deputy Managing Editor of Breitbart News and co-editor of Breitbart Tech. Follow him on Twitter @Marshal_Dov.