Net neutrality - live updates: Politicians prepare to fight against FCC's decision to scrap rules protecting internet freedoms
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Your support makes all the difference.The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC), under the direction of President Trump, has voted to repeal Obama-era rules governing net neutrality.
The five-person board has voted in favour of ending net neutrality, a decision that could have a huge effect on the way the internet works.
Supporters of net neutrality say the move could open the door for internet service providers (ISPs) to charge customers more and dictate what people use the internet for.
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Immediately after the vote, Washington State Attorney General Bob Ferguson said he intended to file a legal challenge against the vote. It is unlikely to be the last.
ISPs greeted the news warmly, but Senator Ed Markey a Democrat from Massachusetts said he would be looking to introduce an act in Congress calling for a review of the FCC decision. he labelled it a "historic mistake".
Jeremy B White, our West Coast Correspondent is answering your questions on the net neutrality decision now.
Amazon Chief Technology Officer Werner Vogels has hit out at the FCC decision:
"I am extremely disappointed in the FCC decision to remove the #NetNeutrality protections," Mr Vogels wrote on Twitter. "We'll continue to work with our peers, partners and customers to find ways to ensure an open and fair internet that can continue to drive massive innovation."
As has Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg:
Today's decision from the Federal Communications Commission to end net neutrality is disappointing and harmful. An open internet is critical for new ideas and economic opportunity -- and internet providers shouldn't be able to decide what people can see online or charge more for certain websites," Ms Sandberg wrote on Facebook. "We're ready to work with members of Congress and others to help make the internet free and open for everyone."
For those of you who missed it, here is our wrap-up of today's FCC vote, what it means and the political and legal repercussions that are already unfolding:
There has already been substantial public outcry around this issue, and advocacy groups are trying to channel that engagement to push Congress to act.
An ACLU-circulated petition asking Congress to invoke the Congressional Review Act* and overturn the regulatory change has already gotten just under 250,000 signatures; and the nonprofit Fight for the Future has set up an online portal for constituents to contact their representatives.
But to get through Congress, of course, this would need to win over the Republican majority — and while some conservatives have said Congress should delineate the rules rather than let agencies take the lead, keep in mind both Speaker of the House Paul Ryan and the White House back it.
*Democratic members of both the Senate and the House have already pledged to do this.
An interesting factor in today's vote: the comments submitted to the FCC ahead of time were voluminous. But some of them appear to have been fake.
The Pew Research Center, a nonpartisan and fairly credible organisation, analysed some 22 million comments and found more than half came from temporary or duplicate email addresses "created with the intention of being used for a short period of time and then discarded". Lots of them contained "false or misleading" personal information, seemingly an effort to obscure the poster's actual identity.
And the vast majority of comments were submitted more than once — sometimes hundreds of thousands of times — suggesting a coordinated campaign. Of those recurring comments, the majority were anti-net neutrality rules — but the number-one most repeated one, which was submitted some 2.8 million times, was in favour of keeping net neutrality.
The Wall Street Journal dug into this too, and reporters there found that some comments were falsely attributed to people who did not, in fact, hold the views their comments suggested. One was in the name of a dead woman.
Commissioners did address this today. Michael O'Rielly, who voted for repeal, denied that the comment process was "irreparably tainted" and said staff had spent extra time sifting through the submissions. But Jessica Rosenworcel, who voted against repeal, warned that "our record has been corrupted and our process for public participation lacks integrity”.
Some larger context on the FCC's action today: it's not the first time the current commission has acted in a way widely perceived as being friendly to large corporations.
Earlier this year, commissioners voted to do away with a rule barring one company from owning both a TV/radio station and a newspaper in a single market and scrapped a prohibition on owning multiple TV stations in a single market (you can think of a market as being akin to a metropolitan area).
Like today's net neutrality vote, that one was also a 3-2 decision. The same two commissioners who voted no today warned of greater media consolidation that would give big companies too much sway over the information America's consume (sound familiar?), while the majority that voted for repeal today argued the old rules were obsolete in our new media ecosystem.
A timely example of what media consolidation looks like: Sinclair Broadcast Group wants to purchase Tribune Media, which would put the post-merger company's content before an estimated 72 per cent of American households.
You can read more about that here.
Another data point to consider: how much consumers have a choice when it comes to getting online.
Proponents of repealing net neutrality argue that the free market will settle things. By this thinking, companies will be deterred from charging people more for certain services because they don't want to anger customers.
Net neutrality advocates counter that internet service providers often have near-monopolistic control over access. Depending where you live, you may have no way to shop around for a better deal.
There's data to support that. The FCC's 2016 report on broadband access found that just over half of Americans, or 51 per cent, have only one option for a provider offering "advanced telecommunication capability".
And that depends a lot on whether you live in a city or not: just under half of Americans living in urban areas are served by more than one provider, a figure that plummets to 13 per cent in rural areas.
Okay readers, we are signing off on #NetNeutrality updates for today, though you can be sure this is an issue we will continue covering. Thanks for getting your news from the Independent!
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