Exploring New Ideas for Protecting and Promoting the Open Internet

It is worth noting some of the ideas in the record that the Federal Communications Commission’s staff has identified as adding to the potential ways that an Open Internet can be preserved.

Commenters have suggested how Section 706 could be used. For example, AOL supports reclassification under Title II with substantive rules promulgated under Section 706. And AT&T has suggested paid prioritization could be banned under Section 706. At the same time, the FCC has been presented with a number of variants on the use of Title II. Tim Wu and Tejas Narechania have made an important proposal of this kind, as has the Mozilla Foundation, which suggested in its reply comments that Title II be used to create a presumption that all paid prioritization arrangements are unlawful. Some parties also have spoken positively of the benefits of both Section 706 and Title II. For example, a coalition of library and higher-education institutions has made proposals that build on these sources of legal authority -- suggesting, among other ideas, a finding that paid prioritization arrangements presumptively violate the law under a standard of “Internet reasonableness.”