Daily Digest 12/18/2017 (Forbidden Words)

When the Federal Communications Commission ruled to scrap Obama-era rules meant to prevent anti-competitive behavior by Internet service providers, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said the action would simply return the Internet to 2014. But the reality is you can't truly turn back the clock on the Internet. Here's a look back at what led to the rules in the first place and what their repeal and replacement means for consumers now.

• Years of trial and error led to 2015 rules
• Fundamental changes were at the heart of net neutrality rules
• Opponents' concerns about the rules foreshadow revocation
• So will 2018 remotely look like 2014?
• Without FCC oversight, the future is uncertain

We’re still too far out to know exactly what disclosures all the big Internet service providers are going to make — the rules (or lack thereof) don’t actually go into effect for another few months — but many internet providers have been making statements throughout the year about their stance on net neutrality, which ought to give some idea of where they’ll land. We reached out to 10 big or notable ISPs to see what their stances are on three core tenets of net neutrality: no blocking, no throttling, and no paid prioritization. Not all of them answered, and the answers we did get are complicated. Many ISPs say they support some or all of these core rules, but there’s a big caveat there: for six of the past seven years, there have been net neutrality rules in place at the FCC. That means all of the companies we checked with have had to abide by the no blocking, no throttling, and no paid prioritization rules. It means that they can say, and be mostly correct in saying, that they’ve long followed those rules. But it is, on some level, because they’ve had to. None of the ISPs we contacted will make a commitment — or even a comment — on paid fast lanes and prioritization. And this is really where we expect to see problems: ISPs likely won’t go out and block large swaths of the web, but they may start to give subtle advantages to their own content and the content of their partners, slowly shaping who wins and loses online.

In the hours after the Trump administration scrapped rules that required internet providers to treat all web traffic equally, a handful of states mobilized in a bid to reverse the decision by the Federal Communications Commission in court — or perhaps write their own new regulations as a replacement. To start, a coalition of state attorneys general, led by New York, pledged on Dec 14 that they would sue the FCC to stop its rollback from taking place. Meanwhile, policymakers in at least two states — California and Washington — said they’d try on their own to prevent companies like AT&T, Charter, Comcast and Verizon from blocking websites, slowing down web traffic or prioritizing their movies, music and other content above their rivals’ offerings. Legislating is an especially fraught, difficult proposition. The order adopted by the FCC doesn’t just kill the existing net neutrality rules — it explicitly seeks to override local policymakers from pursuing their own laws. And the FCC’s Republicans signaled that they’d vigorously pursue any states that tried that anyway.

[Commentary] In essence, the Federal Communications Commission has given Internet service providers the legal power to blackmail any content provider that does not pay them with the threat of a slowdown in service delivery. The FCC clearly has put the ISPs profits above the benefits of consumers and of the overwhelming majority of businesses. With the FCC’s vote, the Internet as we know it is over. For now on our ISPs might serve us faster content from financially robust companies that are able to pay arbitrary fees. Content and apps from new, small, and innovative companies or non-profits could be slow and unusable; news access will be distorted; and consumers’ choices will be diminished. The FCC is forcing consumers and businesses to pay a huge price in order to boost the profits of telecommunications and cable companies. [Nicholas Economides is a professor of economics at the NYU Stern School of Business.]

[Comentary] The Federal Communications Commission GOP majority did what it was intended to do with net neutrality, which was ignore overwhelmingly positive public support across political affiliations and kill the policy anyway. Aside from hurting real sources of innovation, rather than the fake sources like finding new ways to charge more, it opens the door for people of more moderate means and the poor to be at a greater disadvantage than before. Reducing effective Internet access has a profound impact on low- to moderate-income individuals:

• Government services at all levels are increasingly moving online. If you struggle with multiple jobs or the travel time through public transit necessary to get to government offices, reducing access to the Internet means reducing access to vital services.
• Internet access is nearly universal in importance in finding jobs, according to the Pew Research Center. Smartphones are gaining increasing importance in job hunting. Finding work without adequate online access becomes more difficult
• If you've had kids in college in recent years, you'll know that Internet access is virtually mandatory, whether to do research, gain access to course materials, or manage interactions with the bureaucracy.

[Erik Sherman is a feelance journalist]

“I think Tim Wu coming up with the name net neutrality was really brilliant because it sounds really good,” said the economist Michael Katz. “But it is a really bad idea at a fundamental level.” Katz, formerly chief economist at the Federal Communications Commission and now a Berkeley economics professor, thinks the internet should be regulated like most other parts of the economy. If there are abuses by internet providers, they should be dealt with under antitrust law. The main reason Katz is against net neutrality, is that he sees likely benefits from paid prioritization, the ability of internet providers to charge companies for faster speeds. Paid prioritization, Katz says, is normal in most other parts of the economy. Also, according to Katz, low income families who are happy with basic, slower internet would be winners from the end of net neutrality.

Donald Trump Jr. went after critics of the Federal Communications Commission's decision to rescind net neutrality rules, challenging critics to explain net neutrality. “I would pay good money to see all those people complaining about Obama’s FCC chairman voting to repeal #NetNeutality actually explain it in detail,” Trump Jr. tweeted. “I’d also bet most hadn’t heard of it before this week. #outrage.” Twitter users pounced on Trump Jr. In addition to misspelling neutrality, Trump Jr. was mistaken in referring to Chairman Ajit Pai as "Obama's FCC chairman." Although Pai was appointed to the commission by former President Barack Obama, it was President Trump who made him chairman during his first days in the White House. 

[Commentary] The internet, the mega-utility of the 21st century, officially has no regulator. In the meantime, fed up with federal apathy and sick of being held back by lousy internet access controlled by local cable monopolies, scrappy cities around the US are working hard to find ways to get cheap, world-class fiber-optic connectivity. But now there’s an additional obstacle: Powerful right-wing billionaires have joined the fight against municipal fiber efforts, using their deep pockets to fund efforts to block even the most commonsense of plans. Bad news for internet access—the Koch brothers are fighting low-cost open fiber nets. They are funding the Washington, DC-based Taxpayers Protection Alliance, part of a network of dark-money organizations supported in part by the Koch brothers. (The funding seems not to come from the Koch family directly but instead is funneled through other Koch-funded groups.)  [Susan Crawford is a professor at Harvard Law School]

[Commentary] This holiday season, the Federal Communications Commission has made it clear they have massive broadcast conglomerates like Sinclair Broadcasting on their “nice” list while an independent and local media will only be receiving coal. Currently, the national media ownership cap is set at 39% of television households in the US. The FCC is proposing blowing the cap off the rule that ensures there is more than one source of information. The American people deserve better than mega-mergers that will result in fewer local, diverse and independent media choices. The FCC should stop giving Sinclair gift after gift, neatly packaged with unprecedented shadiness and tied with a bow, or else it might as well just let Sinclair Santa run the meetings. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai should give Sinclair’s wishes the serious scrutiny they deserve, so the FCC can get back to working for the American people. [Rep Tony Cárdenas (D-CA)]