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FCC Ignores Americans' Wishes, Fake Comments And Repeals Net Neutrality--But It's Not Over Yet

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Today, as expected, Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Ajit Pai and Commissioners Michael O'Rielly and Brendan Carr outvoted Commissioners Mignon Clyburn and Jessica Rosenworcel along party lines to repeal 2015 'net neutrality' rules that the vast majority of Americans and internet experts wanted to keep.

As news has swept the internet, outcry over the FCC's decision to move forward with the vote despite evidence that the related public comment period was corrupted by fake comments and spam in the millions, as well as polling that shows Americans' bipartisan support for the rules' Title II classification of mobile broadband, has also reached all corners of the web.

See also: Forget Politics: Without 'Neutral' Internet, US Workers Stand To Lose Trillions

With the change to "light touch," often voluntary regulation for internet service providers (ISPs) set to go into effect next year, activists and internet freedom supporters from both sides of the aisle are calling for action online while they still can (yes, really: Republicans included).

Because it's not too late yet; Americans have at least two months and a few ways to compel Congress to fix the FCC's big mistake--which, partisan rhetoric aside, would unavoidably strengthen the already powerful and leave every individual American in a much weaker position for handling the increasingly high-tech landscape, economy, and challenges of tomorrow.

See also: Hey Trump Fans, Haters: If You Value Web Freedom, The FCC Needs To Know Now

By email, Sift Science CEO Jason Tan called the decision "an attack on capitalism, and on democracy," and said opening up internet regulation in this manner puts new businesses on unequal ground--if not a fast-track to failure.

 “I dont think we could have started my current business, Sift Science, without net neutrality. We are trying to democratize the same kind of authentication and fraud detection solutions that Amazon, Google, and Facebook have built for themselves," Tan explained. "We thrive on an open and free internet to collect data, analyze it to assess risk, and transmit the information back to our customers. If the infrastructure to collect and exchange data had been partitioned, it might have made the costs of running our business so prohibitive that we couldnt exist.

In a statement, American Civil Liberties Union senior policy analyst Jay Stanley commented, “Since the end of the dial-up era, the FCC has enforced network neutrality principles and helped create the internet as we know it. Today’s misguided FCC action represents a radical departure that risks erosion of the biggest free speech platform the world has ever known."

“Today’s loss means that telecommunications companies will start intruding more on how people use the internet," he continued. "Internet service providers will become much more aggressive in their efforts to make money off their role as online gatekeepers."

“But the fight for network neutrality is not over by any means. The ACLU and our allies will be fighting back in every possible arena to restore these crucial protections.”

See also: Religious Leaders, Celebrities Call For Net Neutrality Ahead Of Nationwide Protests

To wit, numerous members of congress have already committed to using the Congressional Review Act (CRA) in trying to undo the FCC's decision to scrap the rules. Today, Senator Ed Markey (D-MA) announced that he and 15 other senators will introduce a CRA resolution to "correct the Commission’s misguided and partisan decision and keep the internet in the hands of the people, not big corporations."

Minutes after the FCC's vote, New York attorney general Eric Schneiderman also announced his intent to lead a multi-state lawsuit to “stop illegal rollback of net neutrality.” Schneiderman commented in a statement,

The FCC’s vote to rip apart net neutrality is a blow to New York consumers, and to everyone who cares about a free and open internet. The FCC just gave Big Telecom an early Christmas present, by giving internet service providers yet another way to put corporate profits over consumers. Today’s rollback will give ISPs new ways to control what we see, what we do, and what we say online.

Washington state attorney general Bob Ferguson also announced his intent to sue over the decision shortly after word spread. “Allowing internet service providers to discriminate based on content undermines a free and open internet,” he said in a statement. “Today’s action will seriously harm consumers, innovation and small businesses.”

See also: Earth To Pai: Millions Of Pro-Repeal Comments Likely Used Stolen Identities

The FCC's two dissenting commissioners have also been quick to denounce the decision, and to stand up for the 83% of Americans of all parties who opposed the repeal, in no uncertain terms.

Commissioner Clyburn said in a statement, "I dissent. I dissent from this fiercely-spun, legally-lightweight, consumer-harming, corporate-enabling Destroying Internet Freedom Order." She continued,

Each of us raised our right hands when we were sworn in as FCC Commissioners, took an oath and promised to uphold our duties and responsibilities ‘to make available, so far as possible, to all the people of the United States, without discrimination… a rapid, efficient, Nation-wide, and world-wide wire and radio communication service with adequate facilities at reasonable charges.’ Today the FCC majority officially abandons that pledge and millions have taken note.

Clyburn also noted that there has been "a darker side to all of this over the past few weeks," including millions of fake comments, personal attacks on net neutrality supporters, threats, and intimidation tactics. "Some are illegal. They all are to be rejected. But what is also not acceptable, is the FCC’s refusal to cooperate with state attorney general investigations, or allow evidence in the record that would undercut a preordained outcome," she added.

Commissioner Rosenworcel, who's spent the past several weeks advocating for a more transparent decision alongside Clyburn, tens of thousands of bundled-up protesters, and virtually every major internet company and website, also commented, 

As a result of today’s misguided action, our broadband providers will get extraordinary new power from this agency. They will have the power to block websites, throttle services, and censor online content. They will have the right to discriminate and favor the internet traffic of those companies with whom they have pay-for- play arrangements and the right to consign all others to a slow and bumpy road.

Now our broadband providers will tell you they will never do these things. They say just trust us. But know this: they have the technical ability and business incentive to discriminate and manipulate your internet traffic. And now this agency gives them the legal green light to go ahead and do so.

See also: Thousands Braved The Cold Outside Verizon Stores Yesterday -- Here's Why [PHOTOS]

Toward the end of his own long statement on the matter (just before a paragraph of numerous shout-outs), Pai--who recently poked fun at his own shill-ness--commented accurately, "Many words have been spoken during this debate but the time has come for action."

He continued euphemistically, "It is time for the Internet once again to be driven by engineers and entrepreneurs and consumers, rather than lawyers and accountants and bureaucrats. It is time for us to act to bring faster, better, and cheaper Internet access to all Americans. It is time for us to return to the bipartisan regulatory framework under which the Internet flourished prior to 2015. It is time for us to restore Internet freedom."

And while each sentiment may independently be true and worthy (except for the second-to-last, being total hogwash), internet users, tech giants, and plain old voting laypersons have all determined time and again that none of those will be served by repealing net neutrality rules and thus handing over the reins (more than we already have) to Big Telecom.

For this very intertwined group of massive businesses has spent hundreds of millions of dollars in the past decade (and without breaking a sweat) not on building new infrastructure in chronically under-served and 'offline' communities across the U.S., nor on innovations meant to improve the personal, educational, medical, and professional communication that Americans today rely on like they do clean water--as Pai's supporters have sworn a return to pre-2015 laws would at last free them to do--but rather on opposing rules established with broad public approval to protect us.

After all, these cash-flushed companies fundamentally exist to generate profit for their shareholders in each and every little throttling, squeezing way they possibly can at an enormous scale, and not--unlike our government, say--to look out for freedom of speech, population-wide prosperity, and consumers' rights in this country.

Which is why the vast majority of Americans, who have declared their desire to pursue such aims through an open and pro-people internet, must now call on their tax-fueled government and its representatives to do their actual jobs.

Reach out to yours here, or here, or here, or however you can.

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