Net neutrality: the fight to keep the internet free – The Verge

Biden signs executive order targeting right to repair, ISPs, net neutrality, and more

2021-07-09T08:42:32-04:00

President Joe Biden has signed an executive order meant to promote competition - with technology directly in the crosshairs.

The order, which the White House outlined earlier this morning, calls on US agencies like the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to implement 72 specific provisions. The topics include restoring net neutrality provisions repealed during the prior administration, codifying "right to repair" rules, and increasing scrutiny of tech monopolies.

Biden emphasized a few of the provisions in a press conference before signing the order. He singled out requests that the Food and Drug Admi …

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FCC’s net neutrality rollback overwhelmed by bogus industry comments, investigation finds

2021-05-06T10:34:34-04:00

The New York attorney general's office issued a report Thursday confirming that some of the US's largest broadband providers engaged in a massive campaign to flood the Federal Communications Commission with fake comments in the run-up to the commission's 2017 order to roll back net neutrality.

The attorney general's multi-year investigation found that fake comments accounted for the vast majority of comments received in response to the order - nearly 18 million, out of a total of 22 million.

Out of those 18 million, 8.5 million were submitted through a process called "co-registration," which saw outside companies promising "gift cards and …

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Democrats push new bill to write net neutrality into law, but can it pass?

2019-03-06T12:07:55-05:00

Today, Democrats officially launched their efforts to save net neutrality once and for all. Lawmakers in both the House and Senate have announced bills with the intention of reinstating the net neutrality rules that the Federal Communications Commission moved to repeal back in 2017.

The dual bills share the title of the Save the Internet Act. The full text is three pages, and, according to lawmakers, it will put in place the same rules that the FCC worked to remove over a year ago. The bill would not only codify key pillars of net neutrality, like no blocking or throttling, but it would also consider internet access a "utility" under Title …

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California strikes deal with FCC to delay state net neutrality law

2018-10-26T15:19:45-04:00

California has agreed to delay the enforcement of its "gold standard" net neutrality bill, according to a statement from the law's sponsor Sen. Scott Wiener. The net neutrality rules were set to go into effect next year, but California officials have agreed to wait until the courts have resolved any pending litigation over the Federal Communications Commission's roll back of the federal rules late last year.

California has agreed to delay the enforcement of its "gold standard" net neutrality bill

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai cast the delay as a victory for the Commission. "This substantial concession reflects the strength of the case made by the Un …

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Telecom lobbyists investigated over fake net neutrality comments

2018-10-17T15:39:50-04:00

The New York Attorney General's Office subpoenaed over a dozen different telecommunications lobbying groups on Tuesday to help determine whether they were behind an estimated 9.5 million fraudulent comments posted in support of the rollback of net neutrality, according to a report from The New York Times.

The investigation was launched last November, only a month before the Federal Communications Commission was set to vote on a proceeding that would roll back the open internet regulations instated under the Obama administration. Millions of comments were filed prior to that vote, and according to the attorney general's office, 9.5 million o …

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Broadband industry groups sue California over net neutrality bill

2018-10-03T17:28:50-04:00

Four lobbying groups representing some of the largest telecom companies in the country filed a lawsuit Wednesday opposing California's net neutrality law in an attempt to stop it from going into effect next year.

The four industry groups filing the lawsuit were USTelecom, CTIA, NCTA, and the ACA -groups which represent telecom corporations like AT&T; Verizon Wireless; Charter Communications; and Comcast, and mobile companies like T-Mobile. This is the second lawsuit filed following the passage of California's net neutrality law on Sunday. The first was fired off by the Department of Justice only hours after the bill received its final signa …

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GOP congressman introduces bill to reinstate net neutrality rules

2018-07-17T09:00:03-04:00

In a much-anticipated effort to reinstate net neutrality provisions, Rep. Mike Coffman (R-CO) introduced a bill today that would codify free internet regulations into law. Titled The 21st Century Internet Act, the measure would institute the basic outlines of the Federal Communication Commission's 2015 Open Internet order, which banned the throttling and blocking of content as well as harmful paid prioritization practices. In an even more surprising move, however, the Republican congressman has signed on to a Democrat-led effort to reinstate the net neutrality rules that the FCC voted to repeal late last year.

Last December, when the FCC ca …

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A revamped California net neutrality bill is moving forward again

2018-07-05T15:46:49-04:00

After it was viciously gutted last month, many observers thought California's net neutrality bill was a lost cause. But today, lawmakers announced that they'd reached an agreement to ensure that the legislation will move forward after all, and include tough regulatory provisions.

"This will be the most comprehensive and the strongest net neutrality protection in the United States."

Introduced in the wake of the FCC's rollback of net neutrality provisions, SB 822 and SB 460 reinstated the net neutrality rules outlined in the 2015 Open Internet Order, banned harmful zero-rating programs, and prohibited broadband providers from charging website …

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Democratic lawmaker guts California net neutrality bill

2018-06-20T15:10:46-04:00

A Democratic state lawmaker from California gutted the nation's toughest net neutrality bill by railroading through standard procedure and forcing a vote on a set of amendments removing the stricter regulations.

On Monday, two California lawmakers struck a deal to combine two competing net neutrality bills in the hopes that it would speed through the committee process and provide the state with a stable net neutrality regulatory framework. The bills, SB 822 and SB 460, from Senators Scott Wiener and Kevin de León, respectively, were both introduced as responses to the Federal Communications Commission's reversal of the 2015 Open Internet Or …

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Here’s how companies have flouted net neutrality before and what made them stop

2018-06-11T12:18:20-04:00

Today, the FCC's Restoring Internet Freedom Order takes effect, effectively repealing net neutrality protections in the US. The effects probably won't be sudden; we've explained what might happen without the rules and what's already happened since the vote last year. But no matter what happens this week, repeal opens the door to some real abuses of internet service providers' power - not hypothetical scenarios, but real predatory practices we've already seen in the past.

These incidents show how complicated the issue of net neutrality is: all of these transgressions happened after the 2005 Internet Policy Statement, which laid out four "ope …

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