FCC Approves Net Neutrality Rules, Potentially a Massive Blow to Internet Freedom
The Federal Communications Commission voted along party lines Thursday to approve sweeping changes to how it regulates the Internet, capping more than a year of noisy debate that sparked millions of public comments and drew the attention of President Barack Obama and congressional leaders.
The agency’s three Democrats voted to approve Chairman Tom Wheeler’s net neutrality order, which would treat broadband like a utility to ensure all Web traffic is treated equally. The commission’s two GOP members, Republican lawmakers and the nation’s telecom giants oppose the rules, saying they will dampen innovation and investment. AT&T has already threatened a legal challenge.
That shift incensed Republicans, who see the rules as drastic over-regulation and a federal government power grab. Ajit Pai, the FCC’s senior GOP commissioner, has said the plan could ultimately give the agency the authority to set rates for Internet service — a charge Wheeler and FCC officials have denied.
“The commission’s decision to adopt President Obama’s plan marks a monumental shift toward government control of the Internet,” Pai said at the agency meeting Thursday. “It gives the FCC the power to micromanage virtually every aspect of how the Internet works. It’s an overreach that will let a Washington bureaucracy, and not the American people, decide the future of the online world.?”
GOP lawmakers have been turning up the heat on Wheeler on net neutrality. They’ve launched investigations into what they see as inappropriate White House influence over the FCC’s decision making and offered an alternative legislative proposal that would institute weaker net neutrality rules and tie the FCC hands on future regulation of broadband. (Read more about why the FCC approves net neutrality rules HERE)
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