It’s been a year since the Federal Communications Commission’s decision to scrap network neutrality rules took effect. So far, there’s no indication that wireline broadband providers have taken advantage of their new freedom to control the Internet, although mobile carriers apparently haven’t been as restrained.
To mark the day, an open Internet advocacy group, Fight for the Future, is doing a nine hour “epic livestream” to encourage the U.S. senate to pass a stalled net neutrality bill, and to generally make the case for freedom of access to the Internet. Shameless Plug Alert: I was invited to join the webcast, and I jumped at the chance.
In April, democrats in the U.S. house of representatives approved HR 1644, aka the Save the Internet Act, that would nullify the 2017 rollback, and reinstate network neutrality rules established in 2015 when the FCC also had a democratic majority. So far, the republican majority in the U.S. senate hasn’t done anything with it. There’s been talk that a symbolic effort to force a senate vote will be made today, and that’ll be the focus of Fight for the Future’s livestream event:
The FCC’s net neutrality rollback was also challenged in court. The federal appeals court based in Washington, D.C. – aka the D.C. circuit – heard oral arguments in February. There’s no way of knowing when the three judge panel will issue a decision, or what it will be. The FCC’s defence met with scepticism from one of the judges, but that’s poor basis for trying to make predictions. Whichever way it goes, the losing side has the option of asking the U.S. supreme court to take up the case.
That federal legal battle matters particularly in California, where a law reinstating net neutrality rules is in legal limbo. Senate bill 822 was passed by the legislature and immediately challenged in a Sacramento-based federal court by the federal justice department. Calfornia attorney general Xavier Becerra cut a deal with the Trump administration: enforcement of the new law and the Sacramento court challenge are both on hold until the challenge to the FCC ruling is resolved by the courts.