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[Commentary] [J]ust conceptually, the idea that Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai will get Comcast and AT&T and Verizon and every tiny little regional Internet service provider to put strong open internet provisions in their terms of service agreements is pure nonsense.

First, terms of service agreements change all the time. And people freak out about them, and nothing happens. Do you think the iTunes Terms and Conditions are there to protect you? Facebook’s? Verizon’s? Come on. So what’s to stop Comcast from making this deal today, and then changing its terms a year from now? (It’s certainly not the presence of meaningful access competition in the marketplace!) How will the FTC track every single ISP’s terms of service language, the differences between them, and enforce any sort of consistent, reasonable policy?

Second, let’s say Chairman Pai manages to thread the needle and gets every ISP in the country to agree on the exact same open internet language in their terms of service, and further secures a commitment that the language will remain in their terms in perpetuity. Isn’t that functionally identical to... a law? Shouldn’t we just have... a law? And don’t we already have that law? What specifically is Pai trying to accomplish if he agrees that open internet principles are important?

On March 23rd, Reps Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) and John Conyers (D-MI) introduced a controversial bipartisan bill with over 100 years of history behind it, though you wouldn’t know it from its boring name. It’s called the Register of Copyrights Selection and Accountability Act of 2017 — the key part is that it makes the Register of Copyright a political position appointed by the President and approved by the Senate. That’s in contrast to the current state of affairs, which has been in existence since the creation of the Copyright Office in 1897.

This seemingly small change could have a big impact on a variety of different issues concerning how the internet functions. The simple version is that the music and movie industries have always had an uneasy relationship with the internet, and they worry that the Library of Congress might appoint a Register of Copyrights who thinks expanding copyright protections might not be the best thing for the public or individual creators. And one of the best ways to prevent that from happening is to have much more control over who will be in charge of the Copyright Office. The new bill gives the copyright industry the means to do that by lobbying the president and Congress directly. The long version is a fascinating glimpse at the collision of politics, the internet, and history.

Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon published statements responding to the backlash they’ve been receiving since Congress voted to revoke a strong set of internet privacy rules that would have prevented internet providers from using or sharing their customers’ web browsing history without permission. The companies take different approaches when responding, but the takeaway from all three is that they think customers should stop worrying.

• Comcast takes a friendlier approach and actually makes some basic commitments to customers. “We do not sell our broadband customers’ individual web browsing history,” writes Gerard Lewis, Comcast’s chief privacy officer. “We did not do it before the FCC’s rules were adopted, and we have no plans to do so.”
• Verizon’s approach is similar. The company’s chief privacy officer, Karen Zacharia, offers a fairly clear statement: “Verizon does not sell the personal web browsing history of our customers,” she writes. “We don’t do it and that’s the bottom line.”
• AT&T’s response has the same message at its core, but the tone couldn’t be more different: it’s standoffish and argumentative, with AT&T’s public policy chief, Bob Quinn, trying to explain why nothing has changed and the FCC was wrong in the first place.

Congress shot down the Federal Communications Commission’s internet privacy rules this week, and in doing so, created a world of confusion over what Americans should expect when it comes to online privacy. With the protections gone, no one’s quite sure what to expect — some suspect their browsing habits are going up for sale, while others see no changes coming whatsoever. That uncertainty and confusion is justified: the rules Congress shot down were meant to clarify an existing set of already vague and confusing policies. On some level, it’s being left up to internet service providers, or ISPs, to decide what the rules do and don’t allow them to do. And while none of them are very clear about their intentions, there’s plenty we can suss out based on what we already know. So to cut through the haze, we pulled together everything you need to know about the current state of online privacy rules.

The House of Representatives joined the Senate in a joint resolution to repeal the Federal Communications Commission’s recent privacy rules, leaving only President Donald Trump’s signature before the rules are officially revoked. But while the immediate impact of the joint resolution may be hard to see, it paves the way for a much larger shift in FCC enforcement and, ultimately, the structure of the web itself.

For decades, one of the basic principles of the internet has been that it’s the same no matter where you’re logging on. Now, carriers are getting the chance to tie your online activities closer to your real identity, drawing on the name and address you gave when you signed up for service. Under Chairman Ajit Pai, the FCC seems to have little interest in holding them back. That could have a profound impact on the nature of the web — and after today’s joint resolution, there may be no going back.

[Commentary] On a party-line vote, the Senate voted to repeal the Federal Communications Commission’s 2016 broadband privacy rules giving consumers the power to choose how their Internet service providers use and share their personal data. Now the House of Representatives will vote, and if the House also votes to repeal the rules, the bill will go to President Trump, who is expected to sign it.

The consequences of repeal are simple: ISPs like Comcast, AT&T, and Charter will be free to sell your personal information to the highest bidder without your permission — and no one will be able to protect you. The Federal Trade Commission has no legal authority to oversee ISP practices, and the bill under consideration ensures that the FCC cannot adopt “substantially similar” rules. So unless the bill fails in the House, the nation’s strongest privacy protections will not only be eliminated, they cannot be revived by the FCC. Color of Change, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and Free Press have simple ways for you to tell your Representative what you think of the FCC’s rules and Congress’ efforts to eliminate them.

[Sohn served as counselor to former FCC chairman Tom Wheeler from November 2013 to December 2016]

Facebook's mobile app has added Town Hall to help you find your local government representatives on local, federal, and state levels. The feature fits in with CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s manifesto published in Feb, where he called for a focus on using Facebook to build a more civically engaged community.

With Town Hall, you can enter your address to locate the government officials that represent your district. Facebook says it won’t share your address, though it doesn’t specify whether this information is saved. Town Hall does manage to identify officials down to your local council member. Once your results are populated, you can use the list to follow the representatives’ Facebook pages or contact them by calling, emailing, or messaging. The effort here is nice for those who want to use Facebook as a social venue for encouraging civic engagement. But relying solely on what data these officials have provided on Facebook prevents it from being genuinely helpful.

Your internet provider can see bits and pieces of almost everything you do online: the sites you visit, the apps you use, the services you connect to. It’s an unpleasant reality for anyone concerned with their privacy, since this information can reveal a whole lot about you. But it’s stayed that way because that’s how internet providers want it — and government regulators feel compelled to listen.

Verizon is taking a page out of AT&T’s book by zero rating its Fios cable TV service for all Verizon Wireless customers. That means that if you purchase your mobile data plan from Verizon Wireless and your cable TV plan from Fios, you can now use the Fios Mobile app to stream live channels and on-demand shows and not have it count against your monthly data cap. (Verizon Wireless and Fios are separate subsidiaries, but both are owned by Verizon Communications.) This builds on Verizon’s previous decision to zero rate its Go90 mobile app for customers of its own wireless service, which network neutrality advocates see as prioritizing its own products to the detriment of those from competitors and upstarts. (One notable exception is for customers with unlimited mobile data plans. Streaming Fios Mobile content will in fact count toward the unlimited plans’ 22GB a month limit, after which Verizon will throttle speeds. This caveat is not made clear in Verizon’s marketing language, and instead is found only in the App Store release notes.) With new FCC chairman Ajit Pai calling net neutrality a “mistake” and vowing to roll back regulations on telecoms and internet service providers, Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile may be given even more freedom to do as they please with traffic on their networks.

[Commentary] Though women from various parts of the internet have differing and often conflicting ideas on the best course of action for today's "Day Without a Woman", everyone I spoke to implicitly agreed that whatever we choose matters and that the choices were ones worth weighing and re-weighing. There will be opportunities in the next four years (and beyond) to refine our process for making bold, collective statements online (and off) Of that, we are nauseatingly sure. And however today’s strike affects national discourse, it’ll be a learning experience — yet another in a string of recent events that has compelled those who care about the fate of their country to face activism’s challenging conversations.