Democrats in Congress say they want to “save the Internet” with a net neutrality law. But they will need Republicans’ help to do it. The bills introduced in the House and Senate this week, unfortunately, are unlikely to inspire any cooperation. The bills introduced this week miss the mark. They bring back Title II. Democratic bills would make permanent limitations on rate-setting and other regulatory practices that have alarmed providers, but the classification is still toxic — and outdated. Lawmakers would do better to focus on the three bright-line prohibitions on which most parties have come to agree. Those are bans on blocking websites and services, as well as slowing them down or speeding them up to favor a company’s own content or in exchange for payment. Any rules should otherwise allow providers to manage congestion on their networks as long as they make those management practices transparent to consumers. Congress should also give the FCC meaningful enforcement authority against harmful and anti-competitive practices along with the ability to write future rules to enforce net neutrality. Lawmakers could call this whatever title number they please — as long as it’s not II.

When it comes to hurting businesses, schools and families in rural Oregon, the Federal Communications Commission decision to pull the plug in 2018 on network neutrality really hurts. As the first senator who introduced net neutrality legislation in the Senate more than a decade ago, I am proud to stand on the front lines of 2019’s national fight for a solution that puts real enforceable net neutrality rules back on the books. Everybody understands consumers must pay a fee to get access to the internet. But Big Cable shouldn’t get to rig the internet for the benefit only of those who can afford to pay more. Instead, the question at the heart of the upcoming debate is, once consumers pay that fee, should they be allowed to go on the internet where they want, when they want, and how they want? I believe the answer to that question is “Yes.”

The internet consists of tiny bits of code that move around the world, traveling along wires as thin as a strand of hair strung across the ocean floor. The data zips from New York to Sydney, from Hong Kong to London, in the time it takes you to read this word. Nearly 750,000 miles of cable already connect the continents to support our insatiable demand for communication and entertainment. Companies have typically pooled their resources to collaborate on undersea cable projects, like a freeway for them all to share. But now Google is going its own way, in a first-of-its-kind project connecting the United States to Chile, home to the company’s largest data center in Latin America. In the modern era, telecommunications companies laid most of the cable, but over the past decade American tech giants started taking more control. Google has backed at least 14 cables globally. Amazon, Facebook and Microsoft have invested in others, connecting data centers in North America, South America, Asia, Europe and Africa. 

The 63-page filing by T-Mobile the week fo March 4 was meant to demonstrate that its purchase of rival Sprint is in the public interest. Yet the filing’s appearance -- which prompted US regulators to pause their review -- had some observers wondering if it’s a sign of trouble for the $26.5 billion deal. “At this stage of the game, filing something elaborate like this is not a sign of strength,” said Andrew Jay Schwartzman, a media lawyer at Georgetown University Law Center. “It’s not the kind of thing you would expect at an advanced stage unless they saw that they were getting pushback that they were trying to address.” “All indications were this would be decided in the next few weeks” but now it appears “they haven’t made the case to the policy makers,” said Gigi Sohn, former aide to previous Federal Communications Commission Tom Wheeler. “They’re still grasping at new theories.” “Are they trying to add a new argument, or bolster an existing argument?” said Blair Levin, a former FCC chief of staff. If T-Mobile is adding a new argument, “it tells us their current arguments may not be working so well.’’

With Democrats in control of the House of Representatives, at least one chamber of Congress could be poised to meaningfully update consumer and competition protection rules for the internet age. In doing so, they would be well advised to follow Republican Theodore Roosevelt’s efforts in the industrial age. Today, the internet barons are making the rules for the new economy. Roosevelt’s admonition is simple: There must be a “still higher power” that makes rules for the protection of the public interest.

Today, like a century earlier, the first step in rebalancing between the people and the powerful begins with oversight of the dominant network. Roosevelt spoke of the necessity to “keep the great highways of commerce open alike to all in reasonable and equitable terms.” In the 21st century, that highway is the internet. Keeping it open on a non-discriminatory basis has been labeled “net neutrality.” The second step comes with the establishment of rules for those who ride on the internet. The Trump Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has made noises, but has yet to step up to this challenge. New rules need to supersede the self-interests of internet barons with a basic duty to protect both consumers and competition.

Several of the draft bills related to privacy in the 116th Congress present concrete signs of an emerging shift in the underlying model for privacy regulation in the current discussion, from one based on consumer choice to another focused on business behavior in handling data. This paper focuses on this key element of the taxonomy—how proposals reflect this shifting paradigm and how the change affects other aspects of privacy protection.

A change in the paradigm of privacy regulation from consumer choice to business behavior means that law will have to supply these checks. Center for Democracy and Technolgy’s categories of per se, unfair data processing activities is one effort to put certain uses out of bounds, but its draft bill does not touch on collection. No matter where boundaries are drawn, some existing business models and practices are bound to fall outside. That will make for some complex drafting discussions and difficult political choices ahead.

John Oliver took a swipe at HBO's new parent company AT&T during a segment on March 10''s "Last Week Tonight", which saw him decry the increasing amount of robocalls being made in the US and the Federal Communications Commission's unwillingness or inability to do anything about them. "Everybody is annoyed by robocalls; hatred of them might be the only thing everyone in America agrees on now," he said.He cited statistics that said the number of calls increased by 57 percent last year to nearly 50 billion in total. He also showed a news clip noting that robocalls are the No. 1 complaint to the FCC every year, totaling more than 500,000 complaints a year, about 60 percent of all complaints received by the FCC.

Oliver attacked the commissioners for failing to do more to eradicate the spam calls. "If only there were a way to get the FCC's attention," Oliver said. "One way to do that would be if someone had, I don't know, say, the office numbers of all five FCC commissioners. Because then you could, hypothetically, have a program to robocall all of those numbers every 90 minutes with a message, say, oh, I don't know. Like, this." He then played a recorded message that said, in his own voice: "Hi, FCC! This is John from customer service. Congratulations! You’ve just won a chance to lower robocalls in America today. Sorry, but I am a live person. Robocalls are incredibly annoying, and the person who can stop them is you! Talk to you again in 90 minutes. Here’s some bagpipe music." Oliver then pushed a big red button that he said would "unleash hell" on the commissioners.