Wendy Davis

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prevent California from enforcing its net neutrality law, which was passed after the Federal Communications Commission repealed nationwide broadband regulations.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.

Internet service providers will suffer “irreparable harm” if California is allowed to enforce its net neutrality law, which includes restrictions on carriers' ability to exempt video streams from data caps, trade groups told a federal judge.

The Federal Trade Commission lacks the authority to oversee how social media companies curate political speech, Chairman Joe Simons told the Senate Commerce Committee Aug 5. “Our authority focuses on commercial speech, not political content curation,” Chairman Simons told Committee Chairman Roger Wicker (R-MS) at an oversight hearing.

Siding with The New York Times, a federal judge has ordered that the Federal Communications Commission must disclose information about users who submitted comments during the 2017 net neutrality proceeding, despite the agency's objections that doing so could compromise people's privacy. US District Court Judge Lorna Schofield in the Southern District of New York ruled that disclosure of the data -- including commenters' IP addresses, time stamps, and user-agent headers -- is in the public interest, particularly given concerns that many comments were fraudulent.

It's no secret that the Federal Communications Commission doesn't have the best track record when it comes to measuring broadband. “The Commission must make more robust changes to accurately understand the state of broadband access and adoption across the country,” Access Now, Benton Institutue for Broadband & Society, New America's Open Technology Institute, Public Knowledge and other organizations say in a filing with the FCC.

Advocacy groups are urging the Federal Trade Commission to step up enforcement of a federal privacy law that prohibits website operators from knowingly collecting data from children younger than 13 without their parents' permission.

The New York Times Company is urging a judge to order the Federal Communications Commission to disclose information about network neutrality commenters, despite the agency's objections that doing so could compromise people's privacy. “The FCC’s claims dramatically overstate the potential for harm,” the Times writes in court papers filed May 23 with the US District Court in the Southern District of New York.