Network Neutrality

“I think Tim Wu coming up with the name net neutrality was really brilliant because it sounds really good,” said the economist Michael Katz. “But it is a really bad idea at a fundamental level.” Katz, formerly chief economist at the Federal Communications Commission and now a Berkeley economics professor, thinks the internet should be regulated like most other parts of the economy.

A Democrat, Barack Obama’s former Federal Trade Commission chief Jon Leibowitz, dismissed network neutrality repeal as no big deal in the pages of the Wall Street Journal on Dec 13. He celebrated that the FTC would get restored authority to aggressively police the internet for anti-competitive or unfair conduct.The op-ed contained an unusual disclaimer:" Leibowitz was a Democratic commissioner at the FTC from 2004-13 and chairman beginning in 2009.

[Commentary] In essence, the Federal Communications Commission has given Internet service providers the legal power to blackmail any content provider that does not pay them with the threat of a slowdown in service delivery. The FCC clearly has put the ISPs profits above the benefits of consumers and of the overwhelming majority of businesses.

[Commentary] The vote by the Federal Communications Commission repealing its 2015 network neutrality rules will have an especially negative impact on online innovation.

With network neutrality repeal, internet service providers (ISPs) are free to block or throttle any content they don’t like. That could include video, text and images distributed by people whose voices are underrepresented in mainstream society, including women and people of color.

[Comentary] The Federal Communications Commission GOP majority did what it was intended to do with net neutrality, which was ignore overwhelmingly positive public support across political affiliations and kill the policy anyway. Aside from hurting real sources of innovation, rather than the fake sources like finding new ways to charge more, it opens the door for people of more moderate means and the poor to be at a greater disadvantage than before.

Reducing effective Internet access has a profound impact on low- to moderate-income individuals:

Just take a survey of the past 48 hours:

1. The Federal Communications Commission got an anonymous bomb threat
2. Hackers threatened FCC staff: In an email claiming to be from the hacking group Anonymous, hackers said they had obtained the personal information of many FCC staff, including all of the commissioners.
3. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai made a video for the Daily Caller
4. Late night roasted Pai

We’re still too far out to know exactly what disclosures all the big Internet service providers are going to make — the rules (or lack thereof) don’t actually go into effect for another few months — but many internet providers have been making statements throughout the year about their stance on net neutrality, which ought to give some idea of where they’ll land. We reached out to 10 big or notable ISPs to see what their stances are on three core tenets of net neutrality: no blocking, no throttling, and no paid prioritization.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai said that supporters of net neutrality provisions that were repealed have been proven wrong, as internet users wake up still able to send emails and use Twitter after the regulations were struck down. Chairman Pai said that net neutrality supporters such as ABC late-night host Jimmy Kimmel were wrong to grandstand about the end of "the internet as we know it." "He's getting everything wrong about it," Pai said of Kimmel. "The free and open internet we had prior to 2015 is the one we're going to have going forward.

Donald Trump Jr. went after critics of the Federal Communications Commission's decision to rescind net neutrality rules, challenging critics to explain net neutrality. “I would pay good money to see all those people complaining about Obama’s FCC chairman voting to repeal #NetNeutality actually explain it in detail,” Trump Jr. tweeted. “I’d also bet most hadn’t heard of it before this week. #outrage.”