A majority of the new Democrats in the House have made public statements supporting network neutrality, giving advocates hope that the new members of Congress will have the issue in mind moving forward. Past statements from all 64 new Democrats indicate that at least 45 of them publicly supported net neutrality. Several new lawmakers criticized the Federal Communications Commission‘s decision to rescind the rules in 2017 while others tried to drum up support for the efforts to the use the Congressional Review Act (CRA) to overturn the agency’s decision that ultimately was unsuccessful. But the effort to use the CRA failed to garner enough support in the last session of Congress. Now lawmakers are unable to use it again. This means legislative options—or waiting out the clock with the hopes of a Democrat taking the reigns of the FCC after the 2020 election—remain the most viable congressional options.

A free texting service used by teachers, students, and parents may stop working on the Verizon Wireless network because of a dispute over texting fees that Verizon demanded from the company that operates the service. As a result, teachers that use the service have been expressing their displeasure with Verizon. Remind—the company that offers the classroom communication service—criticized Verizon for charging the new fee. Remind said its service's text message notifications will stop working on the Verizon network on Jan 28 unless Verizon changes course. "To offer our text-messaging service free of charge, Remind has always paid for each text that users receive or send," Remind said in a notice to users. "Now, Verizon is charging Remind an additional fee intended for companies that send spam over its network." Verizon says the fee must be charged to fund spam-blocking services. Remind statement continued, "The fee will increase our cost of supporting text messaging to at least 11 times our current cost—forcing us to end free Remind text messaging for the more than 7 million students, parents, and educators who have Verizon Wireless as their carrier."

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai refused to brief House Commerce Committee staff on why the FCC has yet to end wireless carriers’ unauthorized disclosure of consumers’ real-time location data and what actions the FCC has taken to address the issue to date.

Today, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai refused to brief Energy and Commerce Committee staff on the real-time tracking of cell phone location, as reported by Motherboard last week. In a phone conversation today, his staff asserted that these egregious actions are not a threat to the safety of human life or property that the FCC will address during the Trump shutdown. The safety of first responders and consumers should be a top priority for the Chairman and the FCC. Commissioner Rosenworcel was available for a briefing but, as a minority member of the FCC, she does not have the authority to direct resources at the Commission. There’s nothing in the law that should stop the Chairman personally from meeting about this serious threat that could allow criminals to track the location of police officers on patrol, victims of domestic abuse, or foreign adversaries to track military personnel on American soil.  The Committee will continue to press the FCC to prioritize public safety, national security, and protecting consumers.

The question we face in the digital age is not how to have it all, but how to maintain valuable activity at a societal price on which we can agree. Just as we have made laws about tolerable levels of waste and pollution, we can make rules, establish norms, and set expectations for technology.  Perhaps the online world will be less instantaneous, convenient, and entertaining. There could be fewer cheap services. We might begin to add friction to some transactions rather than relentlessly subtracting it. But these constraints would not destroy innovation. They would channel it, driving creativity in more socially desirable directions. Properly managing the waste of millions of Londoners took a lot more work than dumping it in the Thames. It was worth it.

[Judy Estrin is an Internet pioneer, business executive, technology entrepreneur, the CEO of JLabs, and the author of Closing the Innovation Gap. Sam Gill is a vice president at the James S. and John L. Knight Foundation.]

WordPress is excited to announce funding for a new platform, Newspack by WordPress.com, aimed at small- and medium-sized news organizations. Google, through the Google News Initiative, is taking the lead in backing the project and has committed $1.2 million. Other funders include The Lenfest Institute for Journalism, which is contributing $400,000; ConsenSys, the venture studio backing Civil Media, which is contributing $350,000; and The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, which is contributing $250,000. An additional $200,000 from a fifth source is expected to be contributed toward the project later this month. Our hope with Newspack is to give them a platform where they can continue to focus on what they do best, while we focus on providing world-class technology and support across their editorial and business operations.

FTI Consulting announced the appointment of Frederick Hill as a Managing Director in the Strategic Communications segment. Hill joins FTI Consulting following 17 years of service on Capitol Hill, most recently as the Communications Director for the Senate Commerce Committee where he was the leader of Chairman John Thune’s (R-SD) communications and media outreach team. In this role, he managed communications strategy surrounding the Committee’s priority issues, including efforts to update internet and electronic communications laws, consumer safety, reauthorization of the Federal Aviation Administration, and federal space and science programs. Hill will lead the Telecom, Media, & Technology (“TMT”) sector in FTI Consulting’s Public Affairs practice, and will report to Jackson Dunn, who leads the Public Affairs & Government Relations practice in the Americas.