Louisiana Voice

There is an unnecessary controversy building to a fever pitch as the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) prepared to vote Thursday on abolishing net neutrality.

Unnecessary because the issue should not even be on the table.

Why, other than to financially benefit a half-dozen or so internet service providers (ISPs), would bureaucrats in Washington even consider taking this matter up for a vote?

Everything about the proposed repeal of net neutrality works against the interest of American consumers and to the distinct advantage of companies like AT&T, Comcast, Verizon, Cox, Time-Warner, CenturyLink, et al.

The proposed changes would mean these companies would be able to decide who is and who is not heard. They could create fast and slow lanes and even create toll lanes on the Internet highway, charging extra fees and relegating users to a slower tier of service.

And if you believe for one Nano-second that any of those companies have your best interests at heart, I have some Bernie Madoff stock options you may be interested in.

A group of inventors and technologists authored a letter to Congress in which they said the FCC’s proposed repeal of net neutrality “is based on a flawed and factually inaccurate understanding of Internet technology. These flaws and inaccuracies were documented in detail in a 43-page-long joint COMMENT signed by over 200 of the most prominent Internet pioneers and engineers and submitted to the FCC on July 17, 2017.” The letter said.

“Despite this comment, the FCC did not correct its misunderstandings, but instead premised the proposed order on the very technical flaws the comment explained. The technically incorrect proposed order dismantles 15 years of targeted oversight from both Republican and Democratic FCC chairs, who understood the threats that Internet access providers could pose to open markets on the Internet.”

But the FCC ignored that analysis and refused to hold any public hearings to consider citizen input, the letter said. So much for a full and open democracy in which citizens have a voice.

More than two dozen senators have called for a delay to the vote following reports that more than 80 percent of the 22 million public comments sent to the FCC were generated by bots, nearly unanimously favoring killing net neutrality. Can you say fake news?

On the other hand, about 95 percent of the legitimate comments submitted supported keeping net neutrality and public polling has shown a vast majority of Americans also favor keeping it.

No matter. Donald Trump’s FCC chair, Ajit Pai, plans to go ahead with the vote on Thursday, pitting telecom giants like AT&T and Verizon against Internet behemoths like Google and Amazon who have warned that rolling back the rules would make the telecom companies powerful gatekeepers to information and entertainment.

So, just exactly is net neutrality? Passed in 2015 under President Obama, it is the principle that Internet service providers must treat all data on the Internet the same and not discriminate or charge differently by user, content, website, platform, application, type of attached equipment or method of communication.

In short, net neutrality means an Internet that enables and protects free speech. It means ISPs should not block or discriminate against any content—just as your telephone company cannot decide who you call and what you say on that call.

Under these principles, Internet service providers are unable to intentionally block, slow down, or charge additional fees for specific websites and online content.

A few examples of net neutrality abuse:

• The FCC was had to order Comcast, for example, to halt the secret slowing (throttling) of uploads from peer-to-peer file sharing.
• Madison River Communications was fined in 2004 for restricting access to rival ISP Vonage.
• AT&T was caught throttling access to FaceTime by restricting access to only those users who paid for AT&T’s new shared data plans.
• Verizon Wireless was accused of throttling when users experienced slow videos on Netflix and YouTube.

In each case, those practices were deemed illegal. But if Net Neutrality is repealed Thursday, throttling will become the norm and there’s not a thing anyone will be able to do about it.