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Trump endorses FCC's plan to roll back net neutrality
After last week's heavily participated in Day of Action, where thousands of companies and groups spoke out against the FCC's plan to roll back regulations put in place in 2015, Press Secretary Sean Spicer was asked during a press briefing what the president thought of net neutrality. Spicer said he didn't know, which is a rather ridiculous response given all of the current attention the topic is getting.
Comcast tells the FCC that net neutrality should be voluntary
Last week, thousands of companies and organizations stood up for net neutrality during the Day of Action and as the first round of comments on the FCC's plan to severely cut back protective regulations wraps up, over 8.4 million comments have been filed. Comcast added its comments today and posted its stance online. In sum, it supports the FCC's proposed deregulations but specifically the removal of Title II classifications. Comcast claims it will still support the open internet regardless of the decision but maintains that Title II hurts innovation.
Net neutrality supporters sent over 5 million emails to the FCC
Yesterday, activists advocating for a free and open internet rallied individuals to submit over two million comments and millions of emails and phone calls to the FCC in support of Net Neutrality. Popular sites across the web, from Yelp to Pornhub (and Engadget!), urged users to contact the federal agency and Congress with a singular message: Don't let internet service providers create faster and slower connections to boost their profit margins.
The internet rallies around the fight for net neutrality
Today is the net neutrality Day of Action, and many thousands of organizations, companies and websites are standing up against the FCC's plan to gut net neutrality rules and let ISPs regulate themselves. The first deadline for comments on the FCC proposal is up in five days, and plenty of sites are making it easy today to voice your opinion.
Facebook and Google join net neutrality 'day of action'
July 12th has been declared a "day of action" on the topic of net neutrality. The non-profit group Battle for the Net's event has been backed by a range of tech companies and advocates, including Amazon, the ACLU, Etsy, Kickstarter, the Electric Frontier Foundation, Mozilla, Vimeo, Greenpeace and Reddit. The protest comes as the FCC seems to want to destroy net neutrality, and will now be supported by two previously silent technology giants, Facebook and Google, according to a report in Forbes.
The FCC chairman thinks it's still 1996
FCC chairman Ajit Pai sounds like a broken record. "Light-touch framework." "Light-touch approach." "Light-touch regulation." As an ideological concept, it seems reasonable. Especially to a conservative such as Pai, who believes that the government shouldn't "pick winners and losers," to use a favorite phrase of Republicans. Except, when you actually look closely at the chairman's argument about how to regulate internet service providers, it collapses under its own misguided logic.
The FCC votes to move forward with gutting net neutrality
Today, during an open commission meeting, the FCC voted to move forward with its plans to undo many rules enacted under the Obama administration meant to protect the principle of net neutrality. The most important part of this proposed rollback is changing broadband internet from being classified as a Title II service back to a Title I service. Title I has fewer rules regarding how traffic over the network is treated. Under Title II internet is regulated like a utility and requires that all data across the network be treated equally so long as it doesn't violate any laws. Under Title I however, ISPs are free to prioritize data as they see fit and even charge more to guarantee better service. This is of growing concern as the line between service providers and content providers continues to blur.
The FCC doesn't care what you think about net neutrality
By now, you've probably heard what FCC Chairman Ajit Pai has in store for the internet in the United States. If not, here's the short version: Pai wants to strip the internet of its current status as a "common carrier" under Title II of the Telecommunications Act, roll back the "internet conduct standard" (a vague list of things service providers can't do to interfere with your online experience) and open a discussion about whether we need specific "bright-line" rules that prohibit blocking, throttling and paid prioritization. You may agree with Chairman Pai's assessment of the situation, or you might not. (For the record, most of us around here don't, for reasons we've made clear in the past.)
