Regulatory classification

Along with organizations Fight for the Future, Demand Progress, and Free Press Action Fund, companies including Reddit, Tumblr, Etsy, and Medium are participating in a day of online and offline protests on February 27th. The protest — called Operation: #OneMoreVote — will call upon businesses, web users, and more to “flood lawmakers with phone calls and emails from constituents.” 

Twenty-two Democratic state attorneys general launched a lawsuit aimed at preserving network neutrality on Feb 20, the same day the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) published its rule striking the regulations in the Federal Register. New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, who is leading the suit along with other state attorneys generals, had previously filed a lawsuit, but they are refiling their case now that the order is eligible for legal challenge, following its official publication.

In 2015, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) imposed network neutrality rules on Internet Service Providers (ISPs). The rules depressed investment and harmed consumers. In 2017, the FCC started a proceeding to end net neutrality regulation. Antitrust law can address harm to innovation arising from anticompetitive acts by ISPs.

Today it is official: the FCC majority has taken the next step in handing the keys to the internet over to billion-dollar broadband providers by publishing the Destroying Internet Freedom Order in the Federal Register. I am both disappointed and hopeful. Disappointed that this is one more anti-consumer notch on this FCC’s belt, but hopeful that the arc of history is bent in favor of net neutrality protections. Whether it is litigation, state action, or some other mechanism that brings it about, I am sure that robust net neutrality protections will prevail with the American public!

The FCC’s net neutrality decision is a study in just what’s wrong with Washington. This agency failed the American public. It failed to listen to their concerns and gave short shrift to their deeply held belief that internet openness should remain the law of the land. It turned a blind eye to all kinds of corruption in our public record—from Russian intervention to fake comments to stolen identities in our files. As a result of the mess the agency created, broadband providers will now have the power to block websites, throttle services, and censor online content. This is not right.

[Analysis] Can states force Internet service providers to uphold net neutrality? That's one of the biggest unanswered questions raised by the Federal Communications Commission vote to repeal its net neutrality rules. After the FCC vote, lawmakers in more than half of US states introduced bills to protect net neutrality in their states.

This is a summary of the Commission’s Declaratory Ruling, Report and Order, and Order (‘‘Restoring Internet Freedom Order’’) in WC Docket No. 17–108, adopted on December 14, 2017 and released on January 4, 2018. The full text of this document is available at https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-17-166A1.pdf  Effective date: April 23, 2018, except for amendatory instructions 2, 3, 5, 6, and 8, which are delayed as follows.

Thursday, Feb 22, will be the red letter day for court and congressional challenges to the Federal Communications Commission's Dec 14 decision to roll back network neutrality rules and reclassify Internet service providers out from under Title II common carrier regulations. The FCC Has delivered the final Restoring Internet Freedom order to the Federal Register, which has just signaled it would be publishing that order on Feb 22. That means the repeal will take place on or about April 23. But the lawsuits to overturn the repeal can get started in Feb or in early March.

Apparently, the Federal Communications Commission is slated to publish on Feb 22 its order scrapping network neutrality rules. The official publication of the measure in the Federal Register will start the clock on the 60-day window that Congress has to pass a resolution reversing the FCC’s order to get rid of net neutrality rules. The order’s publication will open the door for state attorneys general and advocacy groups to launch lawsuits aimed at preserving the rules.

This Erratum amends the Restoring Internet Freedom Order as indicated below.