FCC Calls Vote To End Net Neutrality Next Month, And It Has Global Ramifications

The Federal Communications Commission will vote to put an end to its net neutrality rules on 14th December, chairman Ajit Pai announced recently. The final draft of the proposal, apparently removes every existing net neutrality rule, giving the internet providers freedom to experiment with slow and fast lanes, prioritize traffic as they like, even block apps and services. The only rule left is that ISPs have to disclose publicly when they do so.

The commission calls its 2015 net neutrality ruling a “misguided and legally flawed approach”, and argues that removing these rules will “facilitate critical broadband investment and innovation by removing regulatory uncertainty and lowering compliance costs.” It goes on to argue that consumer protections aren’t necessary because the ISPs will be under the oversight of the Federal Trade Commission. The proposal states, “The transparency requirement we adopt, together with antitrust and consumer protection laws, ensures that consumers have means to take remedial action if an ISP engages in behavior inconsistent with an open internet.”

People who support net neutrality have always said that destroying it would allow the ISPs to prioritize their own content over everything else. But the FCC has an argument for that too, saying in the proposal that web companies are much larger than the ISPs. “It is unlikely that any ISP, except the very largest, could exercise market power in negotiations with Google or Netflix,” it states. There’s further argument saying that smaller companies don’t need to worry because any deal made between the ISP and a large company would have to comply with the antitrust laws. The existing antitrust laws seem to be the answer for any potential issues of these policies. It essentially says that if the federal law already covers many of these problems, why should the FCC have separate rules for it? What it seems to forget is that the FCC can have stricter regulations on this kind of behaviour as the federal law in this case isn’t used very aggressively. If anything, this seems to be designed to be more lenient on the ISPs, giving them the power to try new things, even if it comes at the cost of the consumers.

The cherry on top of this absolute lack of a cake is that states will be prevented to implement their own net neutrality rules. The FCC states that allowing the states to do that, “could pose an obstacle to or place an undue burden” on the services. The vote is scheduled to take place on 14th December, and it’s almost certain to pass.

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