Op-Ed

[Commentary] In the weeks leading up to July 12's day of protest over network neutrality in the US, big tech names signed on to join the fight to keep it. Among them were some of the biggest names on the internet, including Amazon, Google, and Facebook, all of which have a vested business interest in all Americans being able to access their sites quickly and frequently. But those sites did not go dark July 12. They didn’t slow down in an effort to mimic what life might be like for some were net neutrality to end.

Instead, they mostly pointed users to other, pro-net neutrality pages. Ultimately, the fight over net neutrality is about who controls the internet: users or major corporations. In that regard, there is only a degree of difference between the 20th century giants of the telecommunications sector and the those of 21st century Silicon Valley. It’s not too difficult a leap to make from wondering why your online access shouldn’t be free from walls erected by your cable company, to wondering equally why your online access shouldn’t also be free from limitations created by a social media platform, search engine, or e-commerce behemoth.

[Commentary] I am excited to embark on the most rewarding work of my career at The United States Digital Service. The USDS is a startup at The White House, using design and technology to deliver better services to the American people. My first project will be helping to untangle, simplify and successfully deliver an improved user experience for veterans on Vets.gov.

“The Vets.gov team is creating a single place for veterans to discover, apply for, track, and manage their benefits online. We are designing with users every step of the way, collaborating with dedicated civil servants, and building the most heavily used and needed services first. As functionality expands and traffic grows, we aim to deliver the best digital experience possible to those who have served our country."

[Randall Weidburg previously worked at Groupon]

[Commentary] Recently a small group of economists (I was one) summarized the economic research on network neutrality and Title II. Limiting ourselves to economics articles in the top 300 journals and that used explicit economic models, we reviewed the answers to four basic questions:

• How would regulations restricting ISPs from offering enhanced network features, such as fast lanes, to content providers affect (a) total welfare, (b) network investment, and (c) the variety of content on the internet and content provider investment? (Note: “Total welfare” is value that consumers receive from what they purchase minus the cost of providing the products.)
• How would prohibitions on network termination fees affect total welfare?
• How would prohibiting ISPs from blocking content affect total welfare?
• Are ISPs like the telecom companies for which Congress wrote Title II?

Here is what we found, but in my own words. 1) The effects of restricting enhanced network features on welfare, ISP investment, and content depend on market conditions. 2) It appears that termination fees could be harmful when ISPs compete for providing access to content providers and an ISP would charge content providers that do not directly connect with the ISP. Otherwise, termination fees are helpful. 3) Blocking is harmful. 4) Economic research today supports the idea that internet services are quite important but has not found that ISPs have the monopoly power contemplated when Title II was created.

[Commentary] Americans’ information independence is under attack, whether it’s the repeal of network neutrality or the repeal of broadband privacy protections. The Federal Communications Commission needs to listen and serve the American people, not special interests. I am committed to protecting both your privacy and the internet as we know it. A free and open internet is essential to our democracy, economy and modern way of life.

[Commentary] I support network neutrality and the rules as the Obama Federal Communications Commission Democratic majority promulgated. But I recognize that there may be benefits to consumers, particularly low-income consumers and the public interest that might warrant exemptions to strict network neutrality rules. We would all be better off if Congress could agree on what those rules and exceptions should look like, but repealing Title II protections will not help us get there.

Much like you have seen the FCC privacy rules replaced with nothing, having polarized the parties, and made deliberation toward compromise more difficult, the repeal of Title II rules will do the same thing....Repealing network neutrality protections without replacing them with something that has bipartisan support at the same time will poison the environment for potential philosophical resolution and compromise to the detriment of network operators, internet innovators and consumers alike.

[Daniel Sepulveda served as ambassador, deputy assistant secretary, and coordinator for communications and information policy at the State Department from 2013 through Jan. 20, 2017]

[Commentary] The Donald Trump presidency, dominated by images of decline and threat, “American carnage” and bad, bad people, has presented any number of challenges to the US press, whose instinct, after all, is to go dark itself. But President Trump has taken that impulse and supercharged it, creating yet another conundrum for reporters tasked with making sense of where we are: Is it possible, in this age, to be too bleak? Is the unremitting negativity of the news itself part of Trump’s approach to destabilizing the news business? Has this negativity in fact helped to facilitate Trump’s rise to power? Is it possible, or even plausible, to modulate the negativity in some way? New outlets should be the breeding ground, not of the type of alarming stories that create a yearning for a strong political hand, but of the knowledge of human imperfection and a way through or around it that puts a modest heroism within reach of the everyday reader.

[Lee Siegel is a New York City writer and cultural critic]

The people’s verdict is in. A slew of recent polls make clear that most Americans, nearly 80%, support keeping the network neutrality rules that are the foundation of an open internet. These are the rules passed by the Federal Communications Commission in 2015, under the leadership of then-chairman Tom Wheeler, that keep the big Internet Service Providers (ISPs) like Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon from determining your internet experience, because they’d rather do that themselves than let you do it. Net neutrality rules prohibit blocking or throttling content. And they keep ISPs from favoring their affiliates, corporate friends, and those who can afford sky-high broadband prices with fast lanes on the net, while the rest of us are told to travel in the slow lane.

[Commentary] At bottom, network neutrality is nothing more than good old-fashioned rate regulation. Accordingly, if you are going to impose rate regulation, then Title II prescribes certain rules you must adhere to in order to ensure that the regulated firms’ Fifth Amendment due process rights are not violated....At stake...is whether an administrative agency should be permitted to re-write the law—especially when it does so simply to fit a political agenda. According to the D.C. Circuit in United States Telecom v. FCC, the answer appears to be “yes.” Citing the Supreme Court’s seminal case in Brand X, the D.C. Circuit found in USTelecom that the FCC had wide—nearly unbounded—latitude to interpret the Communications Act and not only upheld the agency’s decision to reclassify but also upheld the agency’s ability to “tailor” how it chose to implement Title II. In so doing, the D.C. Circuit—rather by design or by omission—has taken Chevron deference to the extreme.

USTelecom has greatly expanded the commission’s authority to set the rates, terms and conditions of private actors well beyond its statutory mandate. Accordingly, the statutory construct of “Title II” now has no meaning; it is some bizarre legal hybrid that the FCC has made up and the D.C. Circuit has sanctioned. For those who care deeply about due process and the rule of law, the precedent set by the D.C. Circuit in USTelecom is deeply troubling and is a case that we will likely have to deal with its aftermath for years to come.

[Lawrence J. Spiwak is president of the Phoenix Center for Advanced Legal & Economic Public Policy Studies.]

[Commentary] If there's anything lawmakers should have learned from activists over the past few years it's this: Do not make the internet angry.

In March, congressional Republicans once again felt the wrath of the internet community when they reversed the Federal Communications Commission’s broadband privacy rules. The blowback from the vote was massive, prompting members of Congress to hide from angry constituents. Now President Donald Trump and FCC Chairman Ajit Pai are digging even deeper and looking to overturn the historic 2015 Net Neutrality win. If they think the internet is going to take that sitting down, they have another think coming. The internet community and allied companies come together to remind President Trump, Chairman Pai and Congress that millions of people in America have made their support for net neutrality known. They know that the repeal of net neutrality means the end of real privacy protections, means paying more for worse service — and enables companies like AT&T, Comcast and Verizon to decide how you use the internet.

[Sandra Fulton is the government relations manager for Free Press Action Fund]

[Commentary]

1. Freedom of expression isn’t a function of the values of a place but the structure of the information infrastructure. Oppressive regimes led by the likes of Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin understood this and used the power of centralized/consolidated information systems to spread propaganda.
2. The 1960s were famous for the rejection of these centralized systems (in this case, the Bell/AT&T monopoly). And, the internet was explicitly designed to be network neutral as a way to fight consolidation.
3. This network neutrality or net neutrality means that every service on the internet competes on a level playing field and it is users (i.e. us) that choose which internet service wins. This system brings its own set of issues with it but it is better than the alternative.
4. Net neutrality principles are closely aligned with the principles behind the freedom of expression. So, the real question underlying the net neutrality discussion is — how much do you care about freedom of expression?