Slate "Today Is a Huge Day in the Fight to Restore Net Neutrality

[NRaleighLiberal]

https://slate.com/technology/2019/02/net-neutrality-repeal-court-ajit-pai-legal.html

The best remaining chance for restoring net neutrality has a key day in court Friday, when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia is scheduled to hear oral arguments in a lawsuit to overturn the Federal Communications Commission’s 2017 repeal of the open-internet rules. As of right now, there’s nothing stopping internet service providers, like Comcast and Verizon, from slowing down access to blocking certain websites, or charging websites to reach users at faster speeds, as long as the companies say that they reserve the right to do so in their terms of service.

The Obama-era net neutrality protections were barely two years old when Trump-appointed FCC Chairman Ajit Pai began taking a “weed whacker” to the rules. The agency’s repeal officially went into effect last June, and two months later, Verizon was caught throttling the internet service of the Santa Clara Fire Department while it was responding to a massive wildfire in Northern California, forcing the emergency responders to pay twice as much to lift their data restrictions. (Verizon claims that it was a customer service error.)


Now, a large coalition of consumer advocates, 22 state attorneys general, and technology companies have lodged challenges to the FCC’s repeal, all of which have been consolidated into a single case with hundreds of pages of legal briefs for the judges and their clerks to read. The FCC and internet providers contend that the repeal was legally sound and good for consumers, and a panel of three judges will hear about 75 minutes of arguments from each side about whether the gutting of the net neutrality order was done to the letter of the law.

Among the many arguments expected Friday, the challengers hold that the internet is an essential communications service, and as such should be regulated to prevent companies from discriminating against how information travels over their wires. Pai argued in his proposal to overturn the 2015 net neutrality rules that that was a misclassification, which he reclassified as an information service, like videoconferencing or email, and thus not subject to strong consumer protections. This was a rather novel argument. “The FCC is saying for the first time that broadband internet access has no telecommunications component,” says Gigi Sohn, who was senior adviser to former FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, who oversaw the passage of the Obama-era protections. “Basically, what they’re saying is the package delivery is the package, the road to the hotel is the hotel, the pizza delivery service is the pizza,” Sohn said, noting the limits of Pai’s conception of the web. People don’t sign up for Verizon because of the email address; they do it to connect to countless websites and services.


snip - more to read at the link above

[crazycatlady]

1. Etsy is urging their sellers to contact their congresscritters

My two senators (Booker, Menendez) support it. My Congressman (Chris '1980' Smith) does not.

Guess who will be getting a call. As an online seller, this affects my bottom line. Etsy does not have the resources Amazon does.

[Blue_Tires]

2. It didn't escape my notice that some of the biggest advocates

for Net Neutrality were also some of the loudest in the "Anybody but Hillary!" crowd...

You'd think folks would learn to put 2+2 together at some point