April 2017

The Federal Communications Commission announces that Jean Kiddoo has been named Chair of the Incentive Auction Task Force and that Hillary DeNigro will join her as Deputy Chair. Kiddoo takes over for Gary Epstein, who will retire from the Commission April 28 after serving as chair of the Task Force since 2012.

Kiddoo has served as Deputy Chair of the Task Force since June 1, 2016, primarily focusing on the post-auction transition. Before that, she served as Deputy Chief of the FCC’s Wireless Telecommunications Bureau, where she oversaw the Bureau's Auctions, Broadband, and Mobility Divisions. Prior to joining the Commission in 2014, Ms. Kiddoo spent more than three decades in private practice, most recently at Bingham McCutchen (now Morgan Lewis & Bockius), representing telecommunications, media and technology companies before federal agencies, courts, state regulatory commissions, and local authorities nationwide. Kiddoo graduated with honors from Colgate University and earned her law degree magna cum laude from the Catholic University of America.

DeNigro has served as Associate Bureau Chief of the Media Bureau. Prior to joining the Media Bureau’s front office, she was Chief of the Media Bureau’s Industry Analysis Division where she led the review of complex mergers, rulemaking proceedings, and the production of industry and market reports. She previously served as Chief of the Enforcement Bureau’s Investigations and Hearings Division, overseeing hearings and directing investigations involving a broad range of matters in the telecommunications and media industries. Before joining the Commission, she practiced commercial litigation at Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy and, prior to that, Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld. She received her J.D. magna cum laude from Georgetown University Law Center and a BA Phi Beta Kappa from Emory University.

[Commentary] Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai wants to characterize this battle as one between “the people” (who love the internet) and “the government” (which, in his view, has been bossing “the people” around). But he’s missing a giant piece of the puzzle.

There are actually three players on the battlefield, not two: the people, the government, and particularly powerful private individuals. The whole idea behind the democratic enterprise is to keep the triangle balanced: not too strong a government, not too powerful a group of oligarchs, and plenty of opportunity for individuals. Chairman Pai is putting his thumb decidedly on the scale in favor of the oligarchs, and it’s a risky move.

[Susan Crawford is the John A. Reilly Clinical Professor of Law at Harvard Law School]

April 26, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai announced that he would open a proceeding to revisit the question of whether Congress directed the FCC to regulate the internet using the regulatory framework adopted in 1934 for the monopoly-era telephone networks. To be clear, this proceeding is not about whether the open internet will continue to be protected and preserved. That question has been asked and answered repeatedly and in the affirmative by Democratic and Republican Administrations alike for well over a decade, first with the Powell and Martin Internet Principles, then with the Genachowski Open Internet Order...

[T]he question of this moment is not whether the internet will remain open – it undoubtedly will. The question is how, as a country, we will regulate the Internet ecosystem – including not only Internet service providers and the broadband infrastructure they deploy, but the tech companies that now dominate the Internet experience. The question is also whether Congress will commit on a bi-partisan basis to adopt a balanced and durable statutory framework that will enshrine reasonable rules for the digital road with specificity and clarity. That, in the end, is the only way to resolve the open internet debate once and for all.

Note: This is an updated version of an older post. Due to the Trump Administration's recent attacks on network neutrality, we felt it was important to resurface these important examples of what happens when cable and phone companies are left to their own devices. For years a lineup of phone- and cable-industry spokespeople has called Net Neutrality “a solution in search of a problem.” The principle that protects free speech and innovation online is irrelevant, they claim, as blocking has never, ever happened. And if it did, they add, market forces would compel internet service providers to correct course and reopen their networks.

In reality, many providers both in the United States and abroad have violated the principles of net neutrality — and they plan to continue doing so in the future. This history of abuse revealed a problem that the FCC’s 2015 Net Neutrality protections solved. Those rules are now under threat from Trump’s FCC Chairman, Ajit Pai, who is determined to hand over control of the internet to massive internet service providers like AT&T, Comcast and Verizon.