A Senate bill that would reverse the FCC’s decision to repeal net neutrality received its 30th co-sponsor on Monday, ensuring it will receive a vote on the Senate floor. Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) announced her support for the bill on Twitter, putting it over the top of a procedural requirement to bypass committee approval.
FCC Chairman Ajit Pai canceled his scheduled appearance at the major upcoming tech industry trade show after receiving death threats, two agency sources told Recode on Thursday. It’s the second known incident in which Pai’s safety may have been at risk, after a bomb threat abruptly forced the chairman to halt his controversial vote to scrap the U.S. government’s net neutrality rules in December 2017.
The fiercest advocates for net neutrality are readying a new war in the nation’s capital, hoping to restore the rules that the Trump administration just eliminated — and galvanize a new generation of younger, web-savvy voters in the process. Not even a month after the FCC voted to scrap its requirement that internet providers treat all web traffic equally, an armada of tech startups, consumer activists and state attorneys general are preparing to take the agency to court.
Following a controversial vote to end Obama-era net neutrality protections, the agency’s chairman calls off plans to be a panelist at the tech industry’s annual trade show.
Minnesota Attorney General Lori Swanson says she plans to join peers from other states in challenging federal rule changes to internet access. Swanson told supporters in an email that she and other attorneys general would sue over the FCC recent decision to repeal the so-called net neutrality rule, which prevented service providers from blocking certain sites or setting rates based on content.
Internet users are complaining more about net neutrality-related issues since the FCC voted to repeal the existing net neutrality rules earlier this month, according to the FCC’s consumer complaint data.
Exclusives
The Open Internet Preservation Act, introduced Tuesday by Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), would prohibit broadband providers from blocking or throttling legal content, applications or services.
The Thursday FCC vote along party lines will likely usher in big changes in how Americans use the internet, a radical departure from more than a decade of federal oversight. The move not only rolls back restrictions that keep broadband providers like Comcast, Verizon and AT&T from blocking or collecting tolls from services they don’t like, but bars states from imposing their own rules.
The Thursday vote scheduled at the FCC could usher in big changes in how Americans use the internet, a radical departure from more than a decade of federal oversight. A growing public movement suggests that the FCC vote won’t be the end of the issue. Opponents of the move plan legal challenges, and some net-neutrality supporters hope to ride that wave of public opinion into the 2018 elections.
Democrats are trying to pressure the at the 11th hour to call off its planned Thursday vote to scrap its net neutrality regulations. Today, 39 senators sent a letter to FCC Chairman Ajit Pai urging him to call off his “reckless” proposal to eliminate the Obama-era regulations.
The Federal Trade Commission and the FCC announced an agreement on Monday to coordinate their efforts to police the internet once the latter agency has repealed its net neutrality rules set for a vote on Thursday..
Since the FCC announced just before Thanksgiving that it was planning to gut the rules, there have been about 750,000 calls to Congress made through Battle for the Net, a website run by groups that advocate for net neutrality. By contrast, there were fewer than 30,000 calls in the first two weeks of November.
The FCC intends to go ahead with a vote on Dec. 14 to repeal the net neutrality rules despite calls from Democrats and advocacy groups to delay the proceeding. The FCC said in a statement Monday that “the vote will proceed as scheduled on Dec. 14.”
Twenty-seven senators are calling on the FCC to delay its vote on repealing its net neutrality rules next week, citing concerns over the possibility that the agency’s public comment file may be filled with fake comments.
The FCC plan to scrap net neutrality rules governing how internet providers handle web traffic has unleashed a wave of intense opposition. As of Sunday afternoon, at least 750,000 people have called Congress since Pai announced his plan, according to battleforthenet.com. And activists are planning hundreds of demonstrations at Verizon stores and congressional offices across the country next week in protest of the planned vote.
No, The FCC Is Not Killing The Internet
FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr: “Americans cherish a free and open Internet — and rightly so. It has revolutionized nearly every aspect of our lives. So, it’s no surprise that the recent announcement that the FCC will vote Dec. 14 to restore Internet freedom has been met with strong (and colorful) reactions. But, unfortunately, far too many are intentionally fanning the false flames of fear.”
It’s no secret that among the millions of comments filed with the FCC regarding its plan to roll back net neutrality are a great deal of fake ones, some even using stolen identities. New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has been especially vocal about this problem, and since the FCC doesn’t seem to care, his office has set up a page to report fraudulent comments directly.
FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said on Tuesday he is proposing rolling back “net neutrality” rules to where they were three years ago, a move he says will not damage online access, as critics have argued.
In a release today, the FCC said it was “setting the record straight on Chairman Pai’s Restoring Internet Freedom Order” announced last week.
After proposing to dismantle net neutrality rules, and setting off a firestorm of criticism, Ajit Pai, the chairman of the FCC, said his family has become the target of harassment.
It’s looking increasingly likely that new FCC Chairman Ajit Pai will succeed with his newly announced plan to repeal the Obama-era net neutrality rules insuring free and open access to the internet. But what does this mean for Hollywood and big media companies? Here’s a wrapup of the winners and losers.
New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is investigating what he calls a massive scheme to corrupt the FCC with fake public comments on net neutrality. Schneiderman said in a tweet his office has been investigating a “massive scheme” over the last six months to “corrupt the FCC’s comment process on net neutrality by impersonating 100,000s of real Americans.”
The chairman says his proposed order — to be released tomorrow and voted on on Dec. 14 — would mean “the federal government will stop micromanaging the internet.” In addition, he said, “the Federal Trade Commission will once again be able to police ISPs, protect consumers, and promote competition, just as it did before 2015.”
FCC Chairman Ajit Pai will reveal plans to his fellow commissioners on Tuesday to fully dismantle the agency’s Obama-era net neutrality regulations, people familiar with the plans said, in a major victory for the telecom industry in the long-running policy debate.
The FCC next month is planning a vote to kill Obama-era rules demanding fair treatment of web traffic and may decide to vacate the regulations altogether, according to people familiar with the plans. The move would reignite a years-long debate that has seen Republicans and broadband providers seeking to eliminate the rules, while Democrats and technology companies support them.
The net neutrality group Free Press is criticizing the FCC over “misleading information” in its upcoming report on mobile competition. The group says the report omits historical context about mobile carriers’ network investment. “The easily verifiable truth is that wireless industry investments peaked in 2013, as carriers completed the bulk of 4G LTE deployments,” the group wrote to FCC Chairman Ajit Pai.
The US Supreme Court on Thursday granted a request from NCTA, AT&T, ACA and others for more time to appeal the FCC’s 2015 Open Internet order. They now have until Sept. 28 to file a petition with the court.
The White House is endorsing FCC Chairman Ajit Pai’s plan to scrap the net neutrality rules. “The previous administration went about this the wrong way by imposing rules on ISPs through the FCC’s Title II rulemaking power,” said Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
But it was all online. Mostly through blogs and social media, major internet-based companies like Facebook and Twitter took part Wednesday in a “Day of Action,” joining others in urging FCC Chairman Ajit Pai not to kill the Obama-era rules, which require internet providers to treat all web content the same.
With the backing of big tech companies, proponents of the FCC’s Title II net neutrality rules today organized an online protest against any attempt to water down the rules. The cable companies used the occasion to argue for a more flexible net neutrality regime. “As we have consistently pointed out, Title II legislation and net neutrality are not the same thing,” says Comcast SVP David Cohen in a blog. “We support permanent, strong, legally enforceable net neutrality rules.”
Individuals whose identities were used without their permission on comments to the FCC are speaking out to the agency. In a letter to Chairman Ajit Pai signed by 14 people, the group offers support for the principle of net neutrality, after the fake comments under their names called for the end of those rules. They also called for the comments to be removed.
Undoing the net neutrality rules may be the biggest fight yet triggered by FCC Chairman Ajit Pai. The tech industry, which sees net neutrality as necessary to innovation, is already pushing back by lobbying politicians, sending letters of protest to the agency and starting to rally supporters.
For months, policymakers have been struggling with the implications of FTC v. AT&T, in part because it overturned about a century’s worth of established legal practice and also, analysts say, because it appeared to open a wide loophole that businesses might use to evade most federal oversight. On Tuesday the federal appeals court responsible for the ruling announced that it has agreed to rehear the case, potentially opening the door to a different result. Here’s everything you need to know.
A bot is thought to be behind the posting of thousands of messages to the FCC’s website, in an apparent attempt to influence the results of a public solicitation for feedback on net neutrality.
John Oliver brought down the FCC’s website Sunday while skewering Chairman Ajit Pai’s plan to scale back net neutrality rules. The Last Week Tonight host ripped the chairman’s proposals and then directed viewers to visit a website with the name gofccyourself.com. That site takes users directly to a page where they can file comments to the FCC on net neutrality.
Sens. Brian Schatz and Cory Booker are urging FCC Chairman Ajit Pai not to go forward with his plan to repeal his agency’s net neutrality rules. The two Democrats wrote in a letter to Pai that taking away net neutrality would lead to an uproar like the one that followed the GOP-led dismantling of internet privacy rules last month.
