Net Neutrality Does Not End Today. We Still Don’t Know When It Will. Which Is Weird When You Think About It.

There is a lot of confusion on the effective date for the 2017 Net Neutrality Repeal Order, aka “Restoring Internet Freedom — Which Is Not In The Least Overdramatic Unlike You Hysterical Hippies.” This is not surprising, given the rather confusing way the Federal Register Notice reads.

The Federal Register notice basically says: ‘Before net neutrality gets repealed and the new, much weaker disclosure obligations go into effect, we are going to wait for the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to review the much weaker transparency rule under the Paperwork Reduction Act and other legislation that is supposed to make it harder to pass rules. Once OMB signs off, we at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will publish a second notice in the Federal Register announcing when everything goes into effect. But until we do that, nothing actually happens. Zip. Nadda. Zero. Total psyche!’ This is, to say the least, highly unusual. There is absolutely no reason for FCC Chairman Ajit Pai to have stretched out this process so ridiculously long.  Whenever the net neutrality appeal does happen, it won’t be Monday, April 23.