Wendy Davis

More than one year ago, President Joe Biden nominated longtime net neutrality proponent and consumer advocate Gigi Sohn [Senior Fellow and Public Advocate at the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society] to the Federal Communications Commission. The full Senate has yet to vote on her confirmation.

US District Court Judge Daniel Domenico in Colorado, a Trump appointee, has thrown out a lawsuit accusing Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) of violating the First Amendment by blocking a constituent on Twitter. judge Domenico essentially ruled that Rep Boebert was free to block people at will from her @laurenboebert account because it is “held out and operated as a personal and campaign account.” The judge said in his ruling that the block wasn't done by the government, because the Twitter account wasn't an official government account.

Major book publishers are pressing a judge to rule that an 11-year-old digital lending program established by the nonprofit Internet Archive infringes copyright. “Masquerading as a not-for-profit library, Internet Archive digitizes in-copyright print books on an industrial scale and distributes full-text digital bootlegs for free,” lawyers for Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins Publishers, John Wiley & Sons, and Penguin Random House write in papers filed with US District Court Judge John Koeltl in the Southern District of New York.

A state court judge in Ohio is allowing Attorney General David Yost to proceed with an effort to prohibit Google from prioritizing its services or products in search results. In a ruling issued May 24, Delaware County Common Pleas Court Judge James Schuck declined to dismiss Yost's claim that Google's search engine is a “common carrier.” “The court believes, at this stage of the proceeding, that the state should have the ability to take discovery, develop its case, and present evidence to support its claim,” Schuck wrote.

California's net neutrality law could pave the way for conflicting broadband regulations in all 50 states, a lawyer for the cable industry argued to a three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. “The question before this court is whether interstate broadband service will continue to be governed by a single, national set of rules, or instead will for the first time face a patchwork of conflicting state regulation,” attorney Scott Angstreich, who represents broadband lobbying groups, told the appellate judges.

The broadband industry says that a New York state ruling against requiring broadband providers to offer $15-a-month service to low-income households supports its quest to block California's net neutrality law. The California law prohibits broadband providers from blocking or throttling content, charging higher fees for prioritized delivery, and exempting certain data from customers' monthly caps.

A broad array of advocacy groups, along with 19 attorneys general, other public officials, and tech companies including Mozilla are urging a federal appellate court to uphold California's network neutrality law. The advocacy groups are weighing in on a battle over a California state law that prohibits broadband providers from blocking or throttling traffic, charging higher fees for prioritized delivery, and from exempting certain material from customers' data caps.

California is urging a federal appeals court to leave in place a state net neutrality law that broadly prohibits broadband carriers from blocking or throttling traffic and from charging higher fees for prioritized delivery. “Congress has not established a federal regulatory regime that bars the states from taking steps to safeguard access to something as essential as the Internet,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta argues in papers filed with the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Broadband carriers are urging a federal appellate court to prevent California from enforcing its net neutrality law, which was passed after the Federal Communications Commission repealed nationwide broadband regulations. In a filing with the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, lobbying groups for the cable and telecom industry argue that broadband is an interstate service, and therefore not subject to regulation by individual states.

The Federal Communications Commission should define broadband as internet speeds of at least 100 Mbps in both directions, up from the current benchmark of 25 Mbps downstream and 3 Mbps upstream, trade groups for rural broadband carriers and fiber carriers argue in a new regulatory filing. The current standard “does not reflect what American consumers need today, let alone tomorrow,” NTCA–The Rural Broadband Association and the Fiber Broadband Association told the FCC.