The FCC has released the final draft of its proposal to destroy net neutrality. The order removes nearly every net neutrality rule on the books — internet providers will be free to experiment with fast and slow lanes, prioritize their own traffic, and block apps and services. There’s really only one rule left here: that ISPs have to publicly disclose when they’re doing these things. 
 
 In the proposal, the commission calls its 2015 net neutrality ruling a “misguided and legally flawed approach.” It repeatedly states that the 2015 order “erred,” was “incorrect,” and came to “erroneous conclusions.” Removing these rules, the commission now argues, will “facilitate critical broadband investment and innovation by removing regulatory uncertainty and lowering compliance costs.” 
 
 The FCC argues that web companies are wealthy enough to fend for themselves 
 
 The proposal also argues that consumer protections simply aren’t necessary because Federal Trade Commission will now have oversight of ISPs. “The transparency requirement we adopt, together with antitrust and consumer protection laws, ensures that consumers have means to take remedial action if an ISP engages in behavior inconsistent with an open internet,” the proposal states. 
 
 So while blocking, throttling, and paid prioritization may be okay with the FCC, the commission says that ISPs will still have to answer to the FTC, which may or may not be okay with those things. At a bare minimum though, the FTC has to be at least somewhat accepting of them — a court has already ruled that blocking those things outright would treat internet providers like common carriers; and since this proposal removes the common carrier designation from internet providers, that won’t be allowed. 
 
 Net neutrality supporters have long argued that these policies could unfairly advantage ISPs’ own content. But in the proposal, the FCC says it thinks that won’t happen — simply because some web companies are so much wealthier than ISPs. “It is unlikely that any ISP, except the very largest, could exercise market power in negotiations with Google or Netflix,” the proposal says. It also argues that small web companies need not worry, because any deal made between a large web company, like Google, and an ISP would need to be consistent with antitrust laws. 
 
 States won’t be allowed to pass their own net neutrality laws 
 
 Existing antitrust law is the commission’s answer for pretty much every problem that could come up. Why should the FCC have its own rules on the books, it essentially asks, if federal law already covers many of these things? That ignores something important, though: federal antitrust law isn’t used very aggressively, whereas the FCC could have strictly enforced prohibitions on anti-competitive behavior. It’s not a huge leap to say this change is designed to significantly loosen the regulatory leash around ISPs so that they can go off and try new practices, even if they may put consumers at risk. 
 
 And in a fun twist, the commission also intends to prevent states from passing their own net neutrality laws. Allowing states to implement their own rules, the commission says, “could pose an obstacle to or place an undue burden” on the delivery of broadband service. 
 
 The order will be voted on next month, at the commission’s December 14th meeting, where it’s almost certain to pass. ||||| November 10, 2014 
 
 An open Internet is essential to the American economy, and increasingly to our very way of life. By lowering the cost of launching a new idea, igniting new political movements, and bringing communities closer together, it has been one of the most significant democratizing influences the world has ever known. 
 
 “Net neutrality” has been built into the fabric of the Internet since its creation — but it is also a principle that we cannot take for granted. We cannot allow Internet service providers (ISPs) to restrict the best access or to pick winners and losers in the online marketplace for services and ideas. That is why today, I am asking the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to answer the call of almost 4 million public comments, and implement the strongest possible rules to protect net neutrality. 
 
 When I was a candidate for this office, I made clear my commitment to a free and open Internet, and my commitment remains as strong as ever. Four years ago, the FCC tried to implement rules that would protect net neutrality with little to no impact on the telecommunications companies that make important investments in our economy. After the rules were challenged, the court reviewing the rules agreed with the FCC that net neutrality was essential for preserving an environment that encourages new investment in the network, new online services and content, and everything else that makes up the Internet as we now know it. Unfortunately, the court ultimately struck down the rules — not because it disagreed with the need to protect net neutrality, but because it believed the FCC had taken the wrong legal approach. 
 
 The FCC is an independent agency, and ultimately this decision is theirs alone. I believe the FCC should create a new set of rules protecting net neutrality and ensuring that neither the cable company nor the phone company will be able to act as a gatekeeper, restricting what you can do or see online. The rules I am asking for are simple, common-sense steps that reflect the Internet you and I use every day, and that some ISPs already observe. These bright-line rules include: 
 
 No blocking. If a consumer requests access to a website or service, and the content is legal, your ISP should not be permitted to block it. That way, every player — not just those commercially affiliated with an ISP — gets a fair shot at your business. 
 
 No throttling. Nor should ISPs be able to intentionally slow down some content or speed up others — through a process often called “throttling” — based on the type of service or your ISP’s preferences. 
 
 Increased transparency. The connection between consumers and ISPs — the so-called “last mile” — is not the only place some sites might get special treatment. So, I am also asking the FCC to make full use of the transparency authorities the court recently upheld, and if necessary to apply net neutrality rules to points of interconnection between the ISP and the rest of the Internet. 
 
 No paid prioritization. Simply put: No service should be stuck in a “slow lane” because it does not pay a fee. That kind of gatekeeping would undermine the level playing field essential to the Internet’s growth. So, as I have before, I am asking for an explicit ban on paid prioritization and any other restriction that has a similar effect. 
 
 If carefully designed, these rules should not create any undue burden for ISPs, and can have clear, monitored exceptions for reasonable network management and for specialized services such as dedicated, mission-critical networks serving a hospital. But combined, these rules mean everything for preserving the Internet’s openness. 
 
 The rules also have to reflect the way people use the Internet today, which increasingly means on a mobile device. I believe the FCC should make these rules fully applicable to mobile broadband as well, while recognizing the special challenges that come with managing wireless networks. 
 
 To be current, these rules must also build on the lessons of the past. For almost a century, our law has recognized that companies who connect you to the world have special obligations not to exploit the monopoly they enjoy over access in and out of your home or business. That is why a phone call from a customer of one phone company can reliably reach a customer of a different one, and why you will not be penalized solely for calling someone who is using another provider. It is common sense that the same philosophy should guide any service that is based on the transmission of information — whether a phone call, or a packet of data. 
 
 So the time has come for the FCC to recognize that broadband service is of the same importance and must carry the same obligations as so many of the other vital services do. To do that, I believe the FCC should reclassify consumer broadband service under Title II of the Telecommunications Act — while at the same time forbearing from rate regulation and other provisions less relevant to broadband services. This is a basic acknowledgment of the services ISPs provide to American homes and businesses, and the straightforward obligations necessary to ensure the network works for everyone — not just one or two companies. 
 
 Investment in wired and wireless networks has supported jobs and made America the center of a vibrant ecosystem of digital devices, apps, and platforms that fuel growth and expand opportunity. Importantly, network investment remained strong under the previous net neutrality regime, before it was struck down by the court; in fact, the court agreed that protecting net neutrality helps foster more investment and innovation. If the FCC appropriately forbears from the Title II regulations that are not needed to implement the principles above — principles that most ISPs have followed for years — it will help ensure new rules are consistent with incentives for further investment in the infrastructure of the Internet. ||||| You can say this much for new FCC Chair Ajit Pai: He keeps his word. Unfortunately for people who believe that internet service providers should not be allowed to determine what sites you visit, Pai’s key promise has been to kill net neutrality. Today, Pai pulled back the curtain on his plan to undo all recent efforts to regulate broadband. 
 
 Pai outlined his vision for the future of net neutrality today in Washington, D.C., at an event held by anti-regulation think tank FreedomWorks. 
 
 The Chair’s goal is to replace the neutrality rules that have been in place since 2015 with a voluntary standard. In short, we’d lose the law that tells companies what they can’t do and punishes them for breaking it, and instead replace it with a pinky swear from Comcast, AT&T, Verizon, and everyone else that, sure, they’ll play along — until they don’t. 
 
 Pai called the Internet, “the greatest free-market success story in history,” thanks, he said, to a hands-off approach by government. 
 
 According to Pai, that all changed in 2015 thanks to “politics,” not law or facts. To counterbalance the “party-line” vote of 2015, then, he has a new proposal that, too, is certain to find support and opposition based on party lines. 
 
 Let’s break it down. 
 
 The Current Rule 
 
 The version of net neutrality we have now is actually something of a 2.0, after the original 2010 iteration was gutted by a Verizon lawsuit in Jan. 2014. That left only a few ways that the FCC could regroup and create a stronger rule that would stand up in court. 
 
 So, after nearly a year spent receiving public comment and dithering over details, the FCC finally adopted the Open Internet Rule in 2015. 
 
 The Rule reclassified broadband providers as common carriers under Title II of the Communications Act. Enacting that classification gave the FCC legal authority to then create three bright-line rules for what ISPs are and aren’t allowed to do with your internet traffic: 
 
 Broadband providers may not block access to legal content, applications, services, or non-harmful devices. They may not impair or degrade lawful internet traffic on the basis of content, application, services, or any classes thereof. They may not favor some internet traffic over other internet traffic in exchange for consideration of any kind — no paid prioritization or fast lanes. 
 
 The telecom industry and its lobbyists sued over the rule, but in June 2016 a federal appeals court sided with the Commission and let the rule stand. 
 
 What Pai Wants To Have Instead 
 
 Today, Pai is proposing a new rule that will have three main sections. 
 
 First, he wants to straight-up undo the Title II classification. Instead of putting ISPs under the same broad heading as phone services (which many of them also are, these days), they’d go back to being considered “information services” regulated under Title I of the law. 
 
 “This Title I classification was expressly upheld by the Supreme Court in 2005,” Pai said, and to his view, “it’s more consistent with the facts and the law.” 
 
 However, in the 2014 ruling that upended the first net neutrality rule, the court held that so long as ISPs are considered information services and not telecommunications services, the Commission doesn’t have the authority to put a net neutrality rule in place. So without that classification as the foundation, other things start to fall apart. 
 
 Second, Pai wants to scrap the part of the Open Internet Rule known as the conduct standard. Critics have claimed that the standard is too vague, because it was designed to be deliberately open-ended, not tied to any existing tech or standards in order to be future-proof. That standard says that ISPs should not harm consumers or edge providers, but does not delineate how. 
 
 The standard is the guideline by which, for example, the FCC evaluated AT&T and Verizon to determine if their sponsored data and zero rating programs were harmful to consumers. (The Commission said in 2016 that they were; in Feb. 2017, the FCC changed its position and completely scrapped the reports from last year.) 
 
 To Pai, this is bad. Zero-rating is popular among consumers, he said, but, “the prior FCC had met the enemy, and it was consumers getting something for free from their wireless providers.” 
 
 (The recent renaissance of unlimited data plans suggests that wireless carriers have found a better way than targeted zero-rating to attract and retain subscribers.) 
 
 Lastly, Pai is opening the floor to comment on what to replace the Commission’s three key bright-line rules with, if anything. 
 
 Why Change? 
 
 In his remarks, Pai repeated his claim that the Open Internet Rule has depressed investment in broadband infrastructure, and must be stopped. 
 
 “Among our nation’s 12 largest Internet service providers, domestic broadband capital expenditures decreased by 5.6% percent, or $3.6 billion” between 2014 and 2016, Pai said. “This decline is extremely unusual. It is the first time that such investment has declined outside of a recession in the Internet era.” 
 
 There is one huge problem with Pai’s assertion, a statistic for which the FCC has not provided a source. It points to investment figures from 2014 through 2016, but the neutrality rules weren’t approved until Feb. 2015 and didn’t go into effect until June 2015. So the Chair is blaming a rule that didn’t exist for a large part of the time period he’s talking about. 
 
 And indeed, looking at publicly available financial data for major ISPs in both 2016 and 2017 gives no indication that providers are scaling back on investment. 
 
 Pai also claims that it’s bad for smaller ISPs, “which simply do not have the means or the margins to withstand the Title II regulatory onslaught.” 
 
 As to why a rule saying, effectively, “don’t do this thing you already claim you aren’t doing and have no need to do” is a regime that would cost providers money, however, he did not explain, saying only that Title II “hung like a black cloud” over small businesses. In short, his argument is that Title II costs money, and money means that small ISPs are not serving poor and/or rural customers as well as they could. 
 
 His goals, Pai says, are to bring high-speed broadband access to more Americans; to create jobs; to boost competition; and to protect your privacy. 
 
 The first three are all related to the idea of investment. The privacy protection, however, connects directly back to the now-defunct ISP privacy rule. 
 
 MORE: The ISP privacy rule is dead, but could anyone bring it back? 
 
 The FCC adopted that rule — which limited what your ISP could do with your data before getting your permission — in Oct. 2016, based on the legal underpinning of Title II regulation. But Congress passed, and the White House signed, a resolution killing off that rule. That puts privacy into a legal limbo: The FTC can’t regulate common carriers, and the FCC can’t regulate ISPs. Pai’s solution? Kill the common carrier designation, to hand over privacy protection to the FTC. 
 
 Why This Is A Terrible Idea 
 
 The FTC has very limited authority to make industry-wide regulations, and can really only create rules that prohibit unfair or deceptive business practices. 
 
 So it can not, for example, tell ISPs to stop collecting and selling sensitive user data, so long as these companies are disclosing the practice in their fine print. That means we must rely on ISPs promising to play nice. 
 
 In most of the country, thanks to the history of cable, broadband providers are a local monopoly. Several reports over the years have shown ghat for the majority of is, competition is nonexistent. 
 
 That leads to an environment where prices get higher and customer service gets worse, because there’s basically nothing you can do about it; you’re a captive audience. Customers are overwhelmingly dissatisfied with their internet providers, consistently ranking them worst among any industry. 
 
 With that as the backdrop, it’s very easy to be skeptical that any voluntary promise is even worth the pixels it’s printed with — because companies break their promises all the time. 
 
 Stripping ISPs of their common carrier classification would make it the FTC’s job, not the FCC’s, to make sure that the ISPs do what they’re going to say — but there’s a big catch there. 
 
 The FTC can only step in if companies are doing something anticompetitive or if they say one thing but then do another, basically. If, absent net neutrality, Comcast or AT&T were to change their terms of service to say something like, “All use of Netflix instead of our proprietary video service will incur you a $1/month additional ‘network usage’ fee, otherwise we throttle it to 768 Kbps” then they’d be in the clear to charge you that fee or throttle your connection. It would only be if they didn’t first disclose their intention that the FTC would bust them. 
 
 Companies can, and do, change their terms of service and customer agreements all the time. If you’re lucky, you get notice and the policy is comprehensible. If not, it happens on the sly. Without a law, there is absolutely nothing to prevent companies from changing their terms and creating fast lanes and additional access fees down the line when people aren’t paying attention. 
 
 What Happens Now 
 
 “From a political standpoint, there is no question that the easiest path would be to do nothing,” Pai said. “Leave Title II alone and move on to other issues.” 
 
 He’s definitely right about that. Alas, we have no such luck; Pai is apparently not interested in the easy path. So now, the fight begins again. 
 
 He’s releasing the full text of the NPRM and NOI — the proposed rule and the open questions the Commission’s asking — on April 27, for the FCC to vote whether or not to consider it in the Commission’s open meeting on May 18. 
 
 If the FCC votes to consider the NPRM and NOI, that will kick off a months-long comment process where the public — which includes advocacy groups, businesses, individuals, and anyone else you can think of — gets to start having its say. 
 
 The battle lines are already drawn, and they look a lot like they did in 2014. In favor of doing away with the Open Internet Rule are ISPs and the organizations that lobby for their interests — AT&T, Comcast, Verizon, and groups like USTelecom and the NCTA (now called the Internet & Television Association). 
 
 The folks asking the FCC to just leave well enough alone, meanwhile, are a wide swath of tech companies and consumer advocates. The big internet companies like Amazon, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Netflix, Reddit, and Twitter started asking Pai to leave net neutrality alone a couple of weeks ago. 
 
 They’re joined today by another chorus of companies: Tech advocacy group Engine sent the FCC a letter in support of net neutrality signed by more than 800 internet businesses from all 50 states. Many are small, niche companies or new entrants you probably haven’t heard of — and that are relying on an open internet to start and grow their businesses. The list also includes several companies that were once tiny and scrappy and that successfully used the open internet to make their now-widely-known businesses grow, including: Etsy, Medium, Meetup, NextDoor, Patreon, Reddit, and Warby Parker. 
 
 Our colleagues down the hall at Consumers Union (the policy and mobilization arm of Consumerist’s parent company, Consumer Reports) had strong words for Pai. 
 
 “Doing away with net neutrality rules could ultimately mean doing away with the internet as we know it,” said senior policy counsel Jonathan Schwantes. 
 
 “Net neutrality rules keep the internet open for all and ensure consumers can access the websites and apps they – not their internet service provider – choose. Rather than leveling the playing field to spur competition and innovation, Chairman Pai’s proposal would allow a select few corporations to choose winners and losers.” 
 
 “The only way to ensure that all content is treated equally is to keep the the internet classified as a public utility,” Schwantes continued. “In this digital age, where individuals and businesses rely on the internet every day, it should no longer even be a question. Voluntary commitments from broadband providers to adhere to net neutrality ‘principles’ are simply not a substitute — especially when there would be no cop left on the beat with the authority to ensure providers stick to their promises.” 
 
 He added “millions of consumers voiced their support for net neutrality rules” the first time around, which is true. The Commission had to extend the public comment deadline after a surge of interest crashed its aging online system. In the end, about four million people commented on the net neutrality proceeding — a record-smashing number. 
 
 Former FCC Commissioner Michael Copps says that gutting the neutrality rules jeopardizes “core protections for online free speech and competition.” 
 
 “Ending net neutrality would be a body blow to the open dialogue upon which successful self-government depends,” adds Copps, now a special advisor to Common Cause. “It would be a red light for democracy and a green light for cable and telecom giants to control where we go and what we do on the internet.” 
 
 Weeks ago, when Pai first set his sights on net neutrality, lawmakers started promising that a second net neutrality fight would make the first one look “minuscule” in comparison. It seems it is time to start fighting that fight. 
 
 You can read Pai’s full remarks here: PDF.
– The FCC released the final draft of its proposal to end net neutrality on Wednesday, and the Verge reports it gets rid of "nearly every net neutrality rule on the books" while allowing for "blocking, throttling, and paid prioritization" on the part of internet service providers. The proposal will allow ISPs to create fast and slow lanes, give preference to certain customers, and stop people from accessing apps and services at will. The one net neutrality rule the proposal leaves in place is that ISPs must publicly disclose when they are doing those things. The FCC says removing net neutrality rules will "facilitate critical broadband investment and innovation." Here's what else you need to know: