Vice

After Nov 7’s elections, a total of 31Colorado counties have voted to be exempted from a state law against municipal broadband networks. 

It’s entirely possible Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai’s proposal will die before being implemented. The first obstacle could arrive as soon as July. Should Democratic-leaning FCC commissioner Mignon Clyburn leave the FCC at the end of June as expected, it would leave the body one commissioner short of a quorum, meaning the FCC wouldn’t be able to vote on Chairman Pai’s proposal. (Adding commissioners would likely mean picking yet another fight with congressional Democrats.)

The 1946 Administrative Procedure Act bars “capricious” rulemaking at federal agencies, and experts anticipate credible legal challenges against Chairman Pai’s proposal for not rising above that standard, especially because of how the FCC has bungled public comment.

[Commentary] Former Motherboard editor Ben Makuch has been pursued by the Canadian government since 2014 for doing his job. For nearly three years, our colleague and friend Ben Makuch has had the full weight of Canada's intelligence agencies, federal government, and court systems bearing down on him for the crime of committing journalism.

While Ben's case has been widely covered in Canada, it has flown under the radar of the Trump-obsessed American press. But what happened with Ben is part of a global trend to prevent the free spread of information by governments that espouse democratic values and supposedly champion an open society.

One of the biggest selling points for YouTube TV is live local channels. Want to watch the Stanley Cup Playoffs on NBC directly on your phone? Or the upcoming NBA Playoff matchups broadcast on ABC? No need to mess with a pesky antenna—stream locals right to your device. The problem comes when you try to spread to the smaller markets where the networks don't have full ownership of the affiliates. The deals can be both difficult and expensive, as previously discussed here. And it's what could potentially keep YouTube TV from spreading across the United States.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai, a former Verizon lawyer, met on April 4 with broadband industry officials to discuss how best to dismantle the legal basis underpinning the FCC's 2015 Open Internet net neutrality policy. "If the FCC's Open Internet rules are directly jeopardized—either by the Trump administration and the FCC, or by Republicans and Democrats in Congress—we will work with our allies to mobilize on a mass scale," said Mark Stanley, a senior official at the progressive organizing group Demand Progress.

The inside-the-Beltway mechanics of how precisely Chairman Pai and his Republican allies on Capitol Hill plan to dismantle the FCC's net neutrality policy are already the subject of DC parlor games. But the procedural details should not obscure the core net neutrality principles at stake: Online innovation, civic empowerment, individual privacy, and free speech. It's these principles that net neutrality activists across the country are now mobilizing to defend. "It took a decade to win the fight for net neutrality, and people will not sit by silently when politicians threaten to take it away," said Craig Aaron, President and CEO of DC-based public interest group Free Press. "They will defend the open internet and the free expression, economic innovation and popular organizing it makes possible. The system may be rigged in favor of corporate giants, but Donald Trump is about to find out the hard way what happens when you mess with the internet."

Open internet advocates are developing political strategies and street-level tactics designed to hold Republicans accountable in the 2018 midterm elections for what privacy watchdogs are calling one of the most brazen corporate giveaways in recent US history. "The [Federal Communications Commission] privacy rollback bill is going to be a big 2018 campaign issue," said Gigi Sohn, a Fellow at the Open Society Foundations who previously served as a top counselor to former FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler. "You can't put lipstick on this pig. It's profoundly anti-consumer."

"Broadband privacy won't simply be a big issue in 2018, it will be one of the biggest," said Malkia Cyril, executive director of the Center for Media Justice. "Those members of Congress who recently took a big bite out of the protections that allow internet users to browse the web safely can expect that we will expose their positions, protest at their headquarters, and pressure all those that support them."

As President Trump's Republican Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai moves to roll back a variety of Obama-era initiatives, the agency's sole remaining Democrat, Mignon Clyburn, is mounting a vigorous defense of the FCC's pro-consumer policies. During a wide-ranging interview, Clyburn vowed to continue fighting to advance net neutrality, as well as her other signature priorities, including expanding affordable broadband access for low-income and underserved communities, and addressing what she calls the "extreme market failure" that forces prison inmates and their families to pay wildly exorbitant phone rates just to stay in touch with their loved ones.