FCC Restores Net Neutrality Rules that Ban Blocking and Throttling in 3-2 Vote
Freeman writes:
Broadband lobby groups prepare lawsuit, calling rules a "net fatality"
The Federal Communications Commission voted 3-2 to impose net neutrality rules today, restoring the common-carrier regulatory framework enforced during the Obama era and then abandoned while Trump was president.
The rules prohibit Internet service providers from blocking and throttling lawful content and ban paid prioritization. Cable and telecom companies plan to fight the rules in court, but they lost a similar battle during the Obama era when judges upheld the FCC's ability to regulate ISPs as common carriers under Title II of the Communications Act.
[...] FCC Republicans blasted the Democratic majority today. "The Internet in America has thrived in the absence of 1930s, command-and-control regulations by the government," Commissioner Brendan Carr said.
Carr, who spoke for more than half an hour, described how the FCC's net neutrality decisions were allegedly swayed by President Obama in 2015 and by President Biden this year. "The FCC has never been able to come up with a credible reason or policy rationale for Title II. It is all just shifting sands, and that is because the agency is doing what it's been told to do by the executive branch," Carr said.
Carr also blamed judges for giving the FCC too much power.
[...] In the weeks before the vote, some consumer advocates criticized what they see as a loophole in the rules that would let ISPs give faster speeds to certain types of applications as long as application providers don't have to pay for special treatment. They say the FCC should explicitly prohibit ISPs from speeding up applications instead of only enforcing a no-throttling rule that forbids slowing applications down. Others say the rules are just as strong as those enforced during the Obama era.
[...] Reinstating Title II also gives the FCC more authority to monitor Internet service outages, the agency said.
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