As promised, Ajit Pai, the new far-right chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, has taken the first action that will put the internet entirely in the hands of internet service providers, ending net neutrality protections for, well, everybody who uses the internet.
In a release, Pai said his proposal would prevent the government from "micromanaging the Internet." In place of the existing rules, he added, the FCC would "simply require Internet service providers to be transparent about their practices."
The proposal would also shift some enforcement responsibility to the Federal Trade Commission, which can sue companies whose actions do not reflect the commitments or statements they have made to the public.
Because we all know how transparent Comcast and Verizon are, right? The providers couldn't be more thrilled, but since they probably wrote the new proposed rules, they aren't surprised. Says Verizon, "We're very encouraged by Chairman Pai's announcement today that the FCC will move forward next month to restore the successful light-touch regulatory framework for internet services." For "light touch" read "nonexistent."
If the full commission decides to adopt this order at its next meeting on Dec. 14, it means that there will be no more enforcement of the net neutrality protections—no blocking, no throttling, and no "fast lanes"—in the existing open internet order millions of us fought to achieve. The internet will be classified as a mere "information service," and the only enforcement the FTC can provide would be slaps on the wrist for violations of truth in advertising claims from the providers.
Well, they'll have to go through millions of us to do it again. Sure, Pai can keep trying to cook the books to make it look like astroturf anti-net neutrality comments are real, the telecoms would never violate net neutrality, the U.S. has the best internet ever, and millions of comments in support of net neutrality were really made by hackers.
We know better. So now we're going to have to take our fight to the Republican Congress. They're going to have to know that when the internet is ruined, we're going to be taking it out on them, and we're going to do it at the polls in 2018.
Time is running out before Trump's FCC and Big Cable destroy net neutrality—but we can still stop them. Tell congress to oppose Trump FCC's plan to destroy net neutrality and the open internet