Internet/Broadband

Even though our net neutrality policies are now legally viable and wildly popular, the leadership at the Commission wants to revisit Internet openness. It has started a proceeding that tears at the foundation of net neutrality. It has proposed cutting the rules we have and instead offering our broadband providers the power to favor sites, content, and ideas; the power to discriminate with our traffic; and the power to become censors and gatekeepers for all that is online. If you want an example, look no further than what happened during the last 14 days with the #MeToo movement.

We are weeks away, from broadband providers being given the green light, to freely engage in paid prioritization, blocking, throttling, or unreasonable discrimination at interconnection points. We are weeks away from the probability, of an entirely new and even wider divide – of those that can afford to pay for priority access, and others that cannot.

AT&T is reportedly abandoning its attempt to stop a Louisville (KY) ordinance that helped draw Google Fiber into the city. In February 2016, AT&T sued the local government in Louisville and Jefferson County, Kentucky to stop an ordinance that gives Google Fiber and other ISPs faster access to utility poles.

[Commentary] As the country grapples with a  serious affront to American democracy, the agreement on the basic facts in the mainstream news media does not extend to Rupert Murdoch’s media empire and other important parts of the conservative media. This is the case even as the special counsel Robert S. Mueller III bears down in his investigation of the alleged Russian efforts to sway the 2016 presidential election.

Executives from Facebook, Google and Twitter appeared on Capitol Hill for the first time on Oct 31 to publicly acknowledge their role in Russia’s influence on the presidential campaign, but offered little more than promises to do better. Their reluctance frustrated lawmakers who sought stronger evidence that American elections will be protected from foreign powers. The hearing, the first of three in two days for company executives, served as an initial public reckoning for the internet giants.

[Commentary] The exchange of information and ideas that takes place on the internet is more important now than ever. To protect it, we need to keep the current network neutrality rules in places. We need them to ensure that people working to make the world better can reach their intended audiences. We need them to ensure that artists everywhere continue to have a platform through which we can discover their work. Right now, the internet is a level playing field. The question the Trump administration needs to answer is: Why would you want to change that?

Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John Thune (R-SD) and Communications Subcommittee Ranking Member Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) have circulated the draft of a bill that would speed the deployment of 5G, just one a host of moves to goose the buildout of high-speed broadband.

[Commentary] Big Tech is broken.  Suddenly, a wide range of journalists and politicians agree on this. For decades, most of the media and political establishment accepted Silicon Valley’s promise that it would not “be evil,” as the first Google code of corporate conduct put it. But the past few months have brought a constant stream of negative stories about both the internal culture of the tech industry and the effect it is having on society. The Tech Left believes it must urgently transform the industry in order to stop it from serving nefarious ends.

Access to, and use of, high-speed Internet is critical for today’s communities. Across rural Minnesota are stories of communities putting in the hard work necessary to bring the benefits of broadband home. These stories illustrate the impact that broadband investment can have on a community’s vibrancy. The purpose of these case studies is to determine the value of that broadband based on impact to the members of that community. These five communities provide a model for economic development and community vitality in rural Minnesota.

Equal protection of data under the law could be removed from the internet for US users. At a recent Keweenaw County Board meeting, Pasty.Net president Charles Hopper discussed the probability that net neutrality laws would be repealed in November by the Federal Communications Commission. Hopper offered one example of the burdens placed on his company as a result of being placed under Title II.