In a vote along party lines, the federal government has ended sweeping net-neutrality rules that guaranteed equal access to the internet.
The Thursday vote at the Federal Communications Commission 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.
FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, a Republican who said his plan to repeal net neutrality will eliminate unnecessary regulation, called the internet the “greatest free-market innovation in history.” He added that it “certainly wasn’t heavy-handed government regulation” that’s been responsible for the internet’s “phenomenal” development.
“What is the FCC doing today?” he asked. “Quite simply, we are restoring the light-touch framework that has governed the internet for most of its existence.”
Under the new rules, the Comcasts and AT&Ts of the world will be free to block rival apps, slow down competing service or offer faster speeds to companies who pay up. They just have to post their policies online or tell the FCC.
The change also axes consumer protections, bars state laws that contradict the FCC’s approach, and largely transfers oversight of internet service to another agency, the Federal Trade Commission.
Commissioner Mignon Clyburn, a Democrat who was appointed by President Barack Obama, lambasted the “preordained outcome” of the vote that she says hurts people, small and large businesses, and marginalized populations. She outlined her dissent from prepared remarks before the vote.
The end of net neutrality, she said, hands over the keys to the internet to a “handful of multi-billion dollar corporations.”
With their vote, the FCC’s majority commissioners are abandoning the pledge they took to make a rapid, efficient communications service available to all people in the U.S., without discrimination, Clyburn said in her dissenting remarks before the vote.
Oh, no, how will ever survive a return to 2015?
A totally stupid move that only benefits the largest ISP’s. Consumers and innovators get screwed again. Thanks Trump! At least one thing about this Congress and Administration…they stay bought!
So far, internet Armageddon hasn’t happened. Guess all the fear-mongering and threats on Chairman Pai’s life by the uber-hysterical left were for nothing.
Beyond idiotic.
The repeal won’t go into effect until 30 days after it is published in the Federal Register. The Main Studio rule, recently eliminated, isn’t effective until early January 2018 as it was just recently published.
The FCC and FTC have already drafted an MOU on how they will divide up the task of regulating ISPs, essentially doing what net neutrality rules were supposed to do. According to Chairman Pai, “”The Memorandum of Understanding will be a critical benefit for online consumers because it outlines the robust process by which the FCC and FTC will safeguard the public interest. Instead of saddling the Internet with heavy-handed regulations, we will work together to take targeted action against bad actors.”
To have federal regulation move so far in such a favorable direction for smaller ISPs is nothing short of amazing.
If only Net Neutrality/Title II fanatics would open their eyes and take a look at retransmission consent, where TV stations actually use their market power and regulatory advantages to block lawful content from reaching cable consumers. Don’t tell t me the cashcasters are available over the air — @nabtweets got the U.S. Supreme Court to dismiss A/B switches as an adequate substitute for must carry. Please Follow Me On Twitter: @TedatACA or @AmericanCable
See what happens when people who have a clue are in charge!!!
2018bstyrevr: That chapter hasn’t been written yet. It’s not the end of the Internet. Not the end of the FCC. Not the end of the president. Hey…maybe it’s the beginning of something. Let’s see. . .