The Republican-majority commission voted along party lines on Thursday to repeal the 2015 rules adopted under the Obama administration, which classified ISPs as public utilities under a 1934 law intended to regulate telephone service. FCC chairman Ajit Pai has argued that these \u201cheavy-handed\u201d<\/em> regulations throttled investment and innovation and harmed poor and rural consumers.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is not Thunderdome. The FCC is not killing the internet,\u201d<\/em> Commissioner Brendan Carr said at the hearing on Thursday. \u201cWe are not relying on market forces alone. We are not giving ISPs free reign to dictate your online experience.\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n \u201cI dissent from the contempt this agency has shown our citizens in pursuing this path today,\u201d<\/em> said Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel, adding the repeal puts the FCC \u201con the wrong side of history.\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n As Pai was laying out his case for repeal, he was handed a note and abruptly declared a recess<\/a>. It was reported that the interruption was due to a bomb threat. The commission reconvened about 20 minutes later, after the room was declared safe.<\/p>\n \u201cWe need to empower all Americans with digital opportunity, not deny them the benefits of greater access and competition,\u201d<\/em> said Pai.<\/p>\n Dozens of protesters held a vigil overnight before the FCC headquarters in Washington, DC, accusing Pai of favoring his old employer \u2013 telecom and ISP giant Verizon \u2013 and wanting to end net neutrality altogether.<\/p>\n Web companies such as Etsy, GitHub, Imgur, Kickstarter, Mozilla, Reddit, Patreon, Pornhub, Pinterest and Tumblr have endorsed the protests, cautioning that their products and services may be throttled by ISPs if net neutrality was repealed.<\/p>\n Net neutrality \u2013 also called the open internet \u2013 is the concept that internet service providers (ISPs) must treat all online content equally and not give preference to any one digital content provider.<\/p>\n Read more<\/p>\n Proponents of the 2015 rules argued that they were necessary to preemptively block ISPs from instituting \u201cpay for play\u201d<\/em> plans and \u201cfast lanes\u201d<\/em> for favored content, while throttling other lawful content.<\/p>\n The FCC chair disagreed, saying that the internet \u201cwasn\u2019t broken\u201d<\/em> in 2015, and that the rules have harmed consumers by throttling innovation and investment, as well as discouraging competition.<\/p>\n \u201cHeavy regulation always benefits the entrenched incumbents much more than the upstarts,\u201d<\/em> Pai told the conservative Heritage Foundation<\/a> in November.<\/p>\n A trade association representing many ISPs says that its members are committed to net neutrality, but oppose the restrictive regulations.<\/p>\n \u201cThe broadband industry has embraced and fostered the development of an open Internet where companies do not block, throttle or otherwise interfere with the customer\u2019s desire to go wherever they want on the internet. Consumers demand it and, more importantly, it makes good business sense,\u201d<\/em> the the National Cable and Television Association (NCTA) said in a statement<\/a>.<\/p>\n The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is not convinced the ISPs will behave without rules, however. Absent the regulations, \u201cnothing will require ISPs to give the same quality of service even to apps that pay the same amount, let alone those that can\u2019t afford it,\u201d<\/em> the EFF argued<\/a> in its opposition to FCC’s plans. \u201cContent from an ISP\u2019s business affiliates or favored partners will be able to get a fast lane no matter how much another website or app is willing to pay.\u201d<\/em> The NCTA called on Congress to conclusively settle the debate on net neutrality and adopt \u201cbipartisan legislation that will end the decades-old legal controversy and permanently enshrine enforceable open internet principles in statute.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Net neutrality activists, however, call this a \u201csolution in search of a problem.\u201d<\/em> According to Evan Greer, campaign director at Fight for the Future<\/a>, \u201cTitle II enjoys immense bipartisan support amongst the public and the courts agree it provides a solid legal foundation to prevent anti-competitive abuse from ISPs.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Moments after the vote, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman (D) announced<\/a> he will lead a multi-state lawsuit against the decision.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Via RT<\/a>. This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News<\/a> with permission or license.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Federal Communications Commission has voted to repeal the rules classifying internet providers as public utilities. Critics say this will lead to pay-for-play behavior by providers, while FCC chair argues it will benefit consumers. The Republican-majority commission voted along party lines on Thursday to repeal the 2015 rules adopted under the Obama administration, which classified […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":339465,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-339464","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339464","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=339464"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339464\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/339465"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=339464"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=339464"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=339464"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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