Today, on the Net Neutrality Day of Action being promoted across the Internet, John Thune has a written piece over at recode.net as to why we need a bi-partisan law to preserve Net Neutrality, as opposed to regulation by the FCC:
Too often, politicians and activists of all stripes prefer slogans over solutions. Today, Silicon Valley players, big and small, and many Washington, D.C.-based activist groups are leading a protest to “save net neutrality” from the Federal Communications Commission’s proposal to undo regulations the agency adopted two years ago. True supporters of an open internet, however, should demand more than another slogan. What the internet needs to end regulatory uncertainty and recurring threats of litigation is an enduring, bipartisan law from Congress to protect internet freedom by codifying widely accepted net neutrality protections.
Administrative rules, especially those affecting all internet users, need to have a broad consensus of support behind them in order to withstand future political changes.
Today, as we consider the future of the internet, we should also remember the history that got us here. Put in place after President Barack Obama pressured regulators to scrap efforts to find agreement, the FCC’s 2015 order regulating broadband internet under a Great Depression-era statute (“Title II” of the Communications Act of 1934) had support from just one political party. This action failed to embrace a self-evident reality — administrative rules, especially those affecting all internet users, need to have a broad consensus of support behind them in order to withstand future political changes. This reality has hit some activists too late, and others are still trying to ignore it — to the detriment of the very protections they claim to support.
Although President Obama tried to justify the use of unilateral administrative action as a remedy for supposed reluctance by Congress to work together, the FCC’s partisan proceeding actually advanced, despite pleas from myself and other Republican colleagues who wanted to work with the Democrats on a new bipartisan law.
The draft proposal we released more than two and a half years ago as a starting point for discussions would have outlawed the online practices of blocking, throttling and paid prioritization of legal content over broadband cable and wireless connections. It put forth a 21st century framework to protect internet freedom by ensuring that corporate owners of broadband infrastructure couldn’t use their role to manipulate the internet experience, and guaranteeing that the sometimes heavy hand of government wouldn’t itself disrupt the positive disruption that has allowed the internet to thrive for two decades. I called for a bipartisan legislative solution before the Obama Administration’s partisan actions, I pushed for it after them, and I continue to fight for it.
What are your thoughts?
Thanks for taking on this fight, Senator. Net Neutrality will stifle innovation, increase prices for consumers, and favor big rich corporations. There is no reason to treat the Internet like a utility.
I’ve been working on the internet for 20 years, mostly for startups doing a lot of innovation. You are totally and completely wrong.
We’ve lived under net neutrality in one form or another for at least that 20 years I mentioend. Net neutrality hasn’t stifled any innovation. It has protected free speech. It has banned extortion by ISPs. Net neutrality is RESPONSIBLE for all the amazing innovation we have seen by providing open access.
I am not sure why some Republicans like Thune have taken up this torch, or why people like you cannot research an issue like this before throwing in with it. Is it just because the way regulation changed in 2015, and that happened to be under Obama? Before then net neutrality absolutely existed in the form of regulations that protected our internet, it just wasn’t done at the FCC.
This isn’t a Democrat vs Republican, Liberal vs Conservative issue.
As someone with a huge amount of experience making a living on the internet, let me spell it out plain. If Thune’s plan to kill net neutrality is successful, these things will be allowed to occur:
* ISPs will be allowed to extort any web site for fees to allow their content. For example, a local business web site advertising a camp ground or business might have to pay fees to an ISP in Minnesota, or be blocked there.
* Similarly, ISPs can simply chose to block speech they don’t like. Is the local Republican sponsoring a bill that the owner of your cable company doesn’t like? Now their campaign site is blocked. How about a Democrat trying to get net neutrality back? Blocked. And it will be legal.
* You may not be able to use services like Netflix because an cable company may block them so you will instead use their pay-per-view. Or they will extort Netflix for huge sums of money, which means your Netflix bill will sky rocket.
Eliminating net neutrality is actually the move that will favor big corporations (Comcast, TW, Verizon, etc) and stifle innovation. You and I currently have unfettered access to surf the web. Without some sort of enforced neutrality, nothing would stop Time Warner from saying “want to access Netflix, Wikipedia, or DWC? Gotta pay for the premium package, $50 more per month.”
Now, you might say “well galdarnit! I’ll just take my business elsewhere!” but what do you say to those areas, many of which exist in rural America, where there’s only a sole provider?
Legislation or administrative rule: Keep the Internet open. Don’t let the telecom industry call the shots
Strange. We had unfettered access to the internet, innovation, falling prices and freedom of expression before 2015 when Obama tried to regulate it.
It isn’t strange at all because the internet was being regulated by the FTC. A court decision basically made it so that the FCC was the responsible party, not the FTC. Your statement is incorrect.
Actually Dave, prior to 2015, there were quite a few violations. Bare with me, American corporations can be quite scummy and this might take a while to read though *unrolls liat*
MADISON RIVER: In 2005, North Carolina ISP Madison River Communications blocked the voice-over-internet protocol (VOIP) service Vonage. Vonage filed a complaint with the FCC after receiving a slew of customer complaints. The FCC stepped in to sanction Madison River and prevent further blocking, but it lacks the authority to stop this kind of abuse today.
COMCAST: In 2005, the nation’s largest ISP, Comcast, began secretly blocking peer-to-peer technologies that its customers were using over its network. Users of services like BitTorrent and Gnutella were unable to connect to these services. 2007 investigations from the Associated Press, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and others confirmed that Comcast was indeed blocking or slowing file-sharing applications without disclosing this fact to its customers.
TELUS: In 2005, Canada’s second-largest telecommunications company, Telus, began blocking access to a server that hosted a website supporting a labor strike against the company. Researchers at Harvard and the University of Toronto found that this action resulted in Telus blocking an additional 766 unrelated sites.
AT&T: From 2007–2009, AT&T forced Apple to block Skype and other competing VOIP phone services on the iPhone. The wireless provider wanted to prevent iPhone users from using any application that would allow them to make calls on such “over-the-top” voice services. The Google Voice app received similar treatment from carriers like AT&T when it came on the scene in 2009.
WINDSTREAM: In 2010, Windstream Communications, a DSL provider with more than 1 million customers at the time, copped to hijacking user-search queries made using the Google toolbar within Firefox. Users who believed they had set the browser to the search engine of their choice were redirected to Windstream’s own search portal and results.
MetroPCS: In 2011, MetroPCS, at the time one of the top-five U.S. wireless carriers, announced plans to block streaming video over its 4G network from all sources except YouTube. MetroPCS then threw its weight behind Verizon’s court challenge against the FCC’s 2010 open internet ruling, hoping that rejection of the agency’s authority would allow the company to continue its anti-consumer practices.
PAXFIRE: In 2011, the Electronic Frontier Foundation found that several small ISPs were redirecting search queries via the vendor Paxfire. The ISPs identified in the initial Electronic Frontier Foundation report included Cavalier, Cogent, Frontier, Fuse, DirecPC, RCN and Wide Open West. Paxfire would intercept a person’s search request at Bing and Yahoo and redirect it to another page. By skipping over the search service’s results, the participating ISPs would collect referral fees for delivering users to select websites.
AT&T, SPRINT and VERIZON: From 2011–2013, AT&T, Sprint and Verizon blocked Google Wallet, a mobile-payment system that competed with a similar service called Isis, which all three companies had a stake in developing.
EUROPE: A 2012 report from the Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications found that violations of Net Neutrality affected at least one in five users in Europe. The report found that blocked or slowed connections to services like VOIP, peer-to-peer technologies, gaming applications and email were commonplace.
VERIZON: In 2012, the FCC caught Verizon Wireless blocking people from using tethering applications on their phones. Verizon had asked Google to remove 11 free tethering applications from the Android marketplace. These applications allowed users to circumvent Verizon’s $20 tethering fee and turn their smartphones into Wi-Fi hot spots. By blocking those applications, Verizon violated a Net Neutrality pledge it made to the FCC as a condition of the 2008 airwaves auction.
AT&T: In 2012, AT&T announced that it would disable the FaceTime video-calling app on its customers’ iPhones unless they subscribed to a more expensive text-and-voice plan. AT&T had one goal in mind: separating customers from more of their money by blocking alternatives to AT&T’s own products.
VERIZON: During oral arguments in Verizon v. FCC in 2013, judges asked whether the phone giant would favor some preferred services, content or sites over others if the court overruled the agency’s existing open internet rules. Verizon counsel Helgi Walker had this to say: “I’m authorized to state from my client today that but for these rules we would be exploring those types of arrangements.” Walker’s admission might have gone unnoticed had she not repeated it on at least five separate occasions during arguments.