The Battle over Net Neutrality is not over
When you realize that the newly appointed executive of the FCC, an agency that commits to “preserve and promote the open and interconnected nature of the public Internet”, is the same person who previously declared that net neutrality days are numbered, you start to question whether the time has come for the world to stop so that you can go off. In a sense, that statement was the same thing as the infamous Trump’s wall. The body whose duty is to uphold the principle of open Internet and support net neutrality is doing everything to raze it to the ground — isn’t this the best evidence of the fact that the world has gone nuts?
In case you have been unaware of the ongoing public debate on the net neutrality, this principle basically means that all data on the Internet should be treated equally regardless of who created it: the Internet service providers (ISPs) may not discriminate against specific websites or platforms by charging, blocking, slowing them down or undermining them in any other manner. Net neutrality also means that ISPs may not manipulate the choices users make, for instance, shut down the access to a particular website for reasons other than legal.
In other words, net neutrality guarantees free and equal access to the content for users as well as equal competitive positions for the producers of that content — again, no one should be given precedence or discriminated. ISPs had a long history of violating net neutrality — Verizon slowing down Netflix is probably the most well-known case.
The drama of the legislative recognition of this principle is not particularly interesting — long story short, the Internet access was reclassified as a public utility during Obama’s second term, which was a real step forward. The regulations made under President Obama were meant to secure net neutrality — but then Donald Trump, the man willing to erase everything Obama administration achieved, was elected; consequently, the man speaking out against net neutrality was appointed the head of the FCC and announced his plan to repeal the Obama-era rules. And the FCC voted in favor of that plan.
But hey, there’s always a silver lining: the telecom lobbyists, who are probably the only beneficiaries of the rollback of net neutrality rules, are now being investigated over posting fake comments against net neutrality during the FCC’s public comment process. We’re talking about people who surely have enough resources to generate 9.5 million fraudulent comments. If they are proven to have distorted the public opinion on the subject (as well as influencing the FCC’s decision to repeal the rules), this would mean that the battle over net neutrality is not over — the advocates of the open and equal Internet are likely to make it to another round.
