Reporting

In a national poll of 1,500 voters, 70 percent of respondents — including Democrats, Republicans and Trump supporters — think the internet has improved while network neutrality rules have been in place.

86 percent of all voters say ISPs should treat all websites and content equally. 75 percent of Trump supporters said they agreed that ISPs should continue to follow net neutrality rules prohibiting slowing or blocking websites or video services. 58 percent of Republicans and Trump voters agreed with the statement, "Internet should be treated like any other utility such as gas or electric service." While it won't change Federal Communications Commission Chairman Pai's mind about reversing the rules, the high number of Trump voters who support net neutrality regulations could get some attention. Showing broad backing helps make the case that support for the net neutrality rules is an issue that resonates outside of the coastal bubbles most associated with tech. That's a message net neutrality advocates hope to send to conservatives as they fight an uphill battle to preserve the rules.

Facebook, Google, Twitter and other companies, activists and startups that rallied in support of net neutrality probably aren’t going to stop the Trump administration from killing the rules currently on the government’s books. But the organizers of the so-called “day of action” insist they reached more than 10 million users with their message, while generating at least 2.1 million comments urging the Federal Communications Commission to rethink its plans. That’s a drop in the bucket, seeing as the tech companies that took part in the protest reach billions of users every day — but the event’s planners stress that they’ve touched a nerve. Some of the web’s largest companies — including Amazon, Facebook and Google — took a more reserved approach. They didn’t darken their webpages, like some companies did during a massive online protest against the Stop Online Piracy Act, and their alerts to users weren’t always easy to find.

In April, 22 small cable providers signed a letter to the Federal Communications Commission asking for the end of network neutrality, writing that the policy imposed “onerous burdens” on their businesses. FCC chairman Ajit Pai has latched onto this. He’s been touting the damage net neutrality could do to regional and “mom and pop” internet providers, and he cited this letter as proof when announcing plans to reverse net neutrality and its classification of internet providers under a legal statute known as Title II. Quite a few of these smaller internet providers have taken issue with the FCC’s net neutrality rules. This is not just because of the rules’ core tenets — no blocking websites, no throttling internet speeds, no demanding payments for access — which many small providers say they support. Instead, they’re concerned about being forced to spend tens of thousands of dollars proving to the FCC that they’re actually following the rules. The Verge called eight smaller internet providers to find out whether they’d been impacted by net neutrality, and the answers were mixed. Multiple respondents, when asked if Title II was hurting them, gave an unqualified “no.”

If you weren’t paying close attention, it may have looked like AT&T got onboard the net neutrality “day of action” protest. The company’s website displayed a banner saying that “AT&T supports an open internet,” and it sent a message to DirecTV customers mentioning the same thing. “Tell Congress to adopt permanent protections,” both messages added, before directing people to an “Open Internet” page on AT&T’s site. But while that page might look like other pro-net neutrality sites at first glance, it’s far from it. AT&T is carefully wording around the fact that it’s opposed to the net neutrality order that activists are fighting for. What’s worse: it’s trying to get people to send an email to legislators and the FCC that pushes its own agenda, while masquerading as something in support of the same cause yesterday’s protest was about.

Broadband providers made it clear this week: they wholeheartedly support net neutrality... but they want to overturn those pesky net neutrality rules and replace them with something that isn't so strict.

In fact, the way to truly protect net neutrality is to keep the Internet free of regulations, Internet provider CenturyLink wrote. Comcast, meanwhile, accused net neutrality supporters of "creat[ing] hysteria." Comcast, which helped kick off the decade-long net neutrality saga by throttling BitTorrent traffic, also pushed for Congress to replace the current net neutrality rules with something weaker. Congress should write "legally enforceable net neutrality rules" in order to "end the game of regulatory ping pong," Comcast wrote. Verizon has also claimed that it just wants new rules that are legally "enforceable," but the current rules are already legally enforceable. A federal appeals court confirmed that when it rejected a lawsuit filed by industry lobby groups. Comcast said that "the Internet was fine before Title II regulation," without mentioning its history of throttling and a lawsuit Comcast filed in order to prevent the FCC from punishing it in the BitTorrent case. Comcast did eventually agree to follow net neutrality guidelines in exchange for US government approval of its purchase of NBCUniversal in 2011, but that merger condition is scheduled to expire in 2018.

Republican House leadership told Facebook, Google and Amazon that overly aggressive net neutrality activism could make it harder to work together on other policy issues the firms care about, according to two sources familiar with the conversation.

The message was delivered in a meeting the day before dozens of internet companies protested the Federal Communications Commission's plan to unwind network neutrality rules. Tech companies are walking a fine line in speaking out against Trump administration policies — and net neutrality is particularly sensitive. On one hand, they generally support the rules (even though they are now so big that they don't necessarily need them) and their employees care deeply about the issue. On the other, they are asking Congress for help on touchy issues like consumer privacy and legal liability for content on online platforms that would have major business ramifications.

More than a dozen media consolidation critics—including Common Cause, Consumers Union and the Writers Guild of America West—told Attorney General Jeff Sessions that from all appearances the proposed AT&T-Time Warner merger cannot be saved by "conditions and piecemeal divestitures" and should be blocked.

The Justice Department is the only one vetting the deal, which was structured to avoid the license transfers that would have triggered Federal Communications Commission review on public interest grounds. "Because this merger poses such grave dangers to consumers and creators in mature and emerging markets, we urge the Department to investigate the merger thoroughly, and take whatever action is warranted, based on the evidence uncovered in your investigation, to prevent harm to competition and consumers. And if you conclude, as appears to us from the available information, that conditions and piecemeal divestitures will not be sufficient, then we hope you will challenge the merger in its entirety," they wrote.

There’s an emerging technology that promises to make computing radically more accessible—even obvious and intuitive—and it’s being applied right now to some of our nation’s biggest challenges. It’s called spatial computing, a term used by some to describe augmented reality (AR) technology, and if we enlist it in service of our national priorities, we can ramp up society’s inclusivity, while also empowering citizens. That’s exactly why public officials, nonprofit leaders, and aspiring social entrepreneurs ought to understand its current applications in order to start envisioning strong civic-use cases. Imagine this: What if the information on your desktop computer or mobile phone wasn’t bound to the screen, but instead projected into the space in front of you—such as on your kitchen table, inside your child’s classroom, or into the produce aisle at the grocery store? That’s the basis of spatial computing. Its aim, basically, is to create a sort of Iron Man, just without the suit.

Rep Ro Khanna (D-CA) is starting a new caucus for members who have sworn off contributions from political action committees (PACs) or lobbyists.

The caucus, called the NO PAC Caucus, is “designed to encourage members of Congress to voluntarily not accept PAC money and to push for legislation that ultimately bans PAC money from Congress,” Rep Khanna said. The caucus has just two other members so far — Reps. Beto O'Rourke (D-TX) and Jared Polis (D-CO) — but Rep Khanna is recruiting Republicans and Democrats, including Reps. Phil Roe (R-TN), Francis Rooney (R-FL) and John Sarbanes (D-MD), to give the caucus bipartisan bona fides. Both President Donald Trump and Sen Bernie Sanders (I-VT) campaigned on reducing the influence of special interests in Washington, Rep Khanna noted. “I think this is bipartisan,” he said.

Edwin Eisendrath, a former Chicago alderman, is leading an investment group buying the Chicago Sun-Times. He told the Sun-Times he wanted a " group of civic-minded" leaders to save the paper: “A great group has come together and made sure that a genuine voice with honest and good reporting that connects with working men and women thrives.” Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but the Poynter Institute, a journalism organization, reports that the paper sold for what amounts to $1 and the assumption of any costs part of a future shutdown. The deal comes after the Department of Justice's antitrust division announced it was investigating a possible acquisition by Tronc, formerly known as Tribune Publishing, which has newspaper holdings that include the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune. The deal would have put both of Chicago's major newspapers under the same owner.