Net neutrality has won at the FCC. In a 3-to-2 vote, the Federal Communications Commission today established a new Open Internet Order that implements strict net neutrality rules, including prohibitions on site and app blocking, speed throttling, and paid fast lanes.
Critically, the order also reclassifies internet providers' offerings as telecommunications services under Title II of the Communications Act. Though this is likely to provoke a challenge in court, Title II gives the commission the tools it needs to enforce these strict rules.
This is also the first time that net neutrality rules will apply, in full, to mobile internet service. Additionally, the commission uses the new order to assert its ability to investigate and address complaints about "interconnect" agreements — deals made between internet providers like Comcast and content companies like Netflix, which has regularly complained that these deals are unfair.
The FCC's new order establishes a standard that requires internet providers to take no actions that unreasonably interfere with or disadvantage consumers or the companies whose sites and apps they're trying to access. At most, internet providers may slow down service only for the purpose of "reasonable network management" — not a business purpose.
This is a huge win for net neutrality advocates. Since the commission's original net neutrality rules were struck down in court last year, advocates have been pushing for the FCC to use utility-style Title II reclassification when implementing a new order.
For a while, it didn't look like that was going to happen. Commission chairman Tom Wheeler initially proposed rules that seemingly undermined the entire concept of net neutrality by allowing paid fast lanes. But earlier this month, following support from President Obama and millions of public comments spurred on by a popular John Oliver segment and advocacy from major websites like Netflix, Kickstarter, and Tumblr, Wheeler announced the dramatically overhauled new plan that was pushed through today.
"The action that we take today is an irrefutable reflection of the principle that no one, whether government or corporate, should control free and open access to the internet," Wheeler said.
"We cannot have a two-tiered internet with fast lanes that speed the traffic of the privileged and leave the rest of us lagging behind," commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel said at today's meeting. "We cannot have gatekeepers who tell us what we can and cannot do and where we can and cannot go online. And we do not need blocking, throttling, and paid prioritization schemes that undermine the internet as we know it."
Commissioner Mignon Clyburn also spoke strongly in favor of the order. "We are here because we want to give those with deep pockets and those with empty pockets the same opportunities to succeed," she said. Clyburn notes that, while she voted in favor of the 2010 rules, today's order is far closer to what she originally supported. Clyburn also says that a minor classification change has been made to the proposal to address one of her concerns with it — an issue that Google and Free Press both agreed with her on. That said, Clyburn says that she would have liked to see the "unreasonable discrimination rule" from the 2010 order used here instead of the unreasonably interference rule, and that isn't being changed.
As the vote makes clear, the entire commission isn't on board with the new rules. Both Republican commissioners, Michael O’Rielly and Ajit Pai, have expressed their disagreement with the order. Prior to the vote today, O'Rielly issued a statement arguing that the commission's decision-making power had been usurped by the administration for political purposes. He also argues that net neutrality is unnecessary, that Title II imposes overbearing regulation, and that Title II doesn't actually stand on solid legal footing. For comparison, he has previously drawn a line between 4K TV and interplanetary teleportation.
Pai put forward a strong dissent as well, arguing that the commission was unable to act independently. "We are flip-flopping for one reason and one reason only," Pai said. "President Obama told us to do so." Pai believes that implementing this order will lead to "higher broadband prices, slower broadband speeds, less broadband deployment, less innovation, and fewer options for consumers." He also questioned the commission's legal authority to implement the order.
The commission also brought out a number of notable advocates to speak before the vote. That included Etsy CEO Chad Dickerson, Veena Sud, an executive producer for The Killing who appeared to be speaking on behalf of Netflix, and Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the web. Dickerson applauded the commission for protecting the internet "as an engine for economic opportunity, the likes of which we have never seen." Sud pointed to multiple Netflix series and cited the greater diversity you find online. Berners-Lee put his feelings quite simply: "We have to add net neutrality to a list of basic market conditions that we protect."
The new rules should go into effect around two to three months from now, though the time will vary depending on how long it takes the commission to release the order to the Federal Register. The commissioners may still need to fix technical points in the order, which can be changed with unanimous agreement.
Though this is an important victory for net neutrality advocates, their fight is not yet over. It is almost certain that one internet provider or another will challenge the rules in court, and those proceedings could take years, leaving the future of this order uncertain. The commission's chances in court look good, but there are a number of complications that it will likely have to address. This time, at least, the FCC is using the strongest tools that it has to implement these protections.
Check out our FCC net neutrality meeting liveblog for more!
Comments
Fuck yes.
By Clock190 on 02.26.15 1:01pm
Yeah, great. The shitty internet has been saved.
By Farrel on 02.28.15 8:32am
Not saved, just not outright screwed. For now, at least.
By Clock190 on 02.28.15 10:34am
What a shame.
By Farrel on 02.28.15 11:20am
Just watched this vote, it was almost as exciting as the House of Cards votes. "The ayes have it!"
By DerpyDerp on 02.26.15 1:03pm
This is an incredible moment in American history!
By boberto on 02.26.15 1:03pm
Abolishing slavery was an incredible moment in American history.
This moment is just a pointed reminder of where ‘legalized corruption’ has, in recent decades, brought the country to.
By vahbmas on 02.26.15 1:43pm
That said, yes, a joyous moment for us net neutrality advocates for sure.
By vahbmas on 02.26.15 1:55pm
Well that escalated quickly.
By IamPAYNE on 02.26.15 2:23pm
http://media.zenfs.com/en-US/video/video.snl.com/SNL_1350_09_Debbie_Downer.png
By okaycolin on 02.26.15 6:36pm
You’re not wrong, you’re just an asshole.
By boberto on 02.26.15 6:57pm
Yeah, it’s incredible all right. Incredibly stupid. Hope you enjoyed your progression to the future while it lasted because now there will be much less capital deployed into network infrastructure. Bring on the good ole dark ages… you know, like in the ’70s.
By Butt Kicker on 02.26.15 9:48pm
So you bought Comcast and AT&T’s nonsense hook, line, and sinker. The ISP business is incredibly profitable, and will continue to be so for as long as there are so few providers. Anyone who stops investing in network infrastructure will be cutting their nose off to spite their face.
By stringfold on 02.27.15 3:34am
Lol you bought that bogus line? Despite the fact that in investor meetings the big wigs admitted that these rulings will have no effect on their investment.
Whether or not ISPs have the legal right to discriminatly charge content providers, they still want consumers to choose their service over the competition. That means the ISPs will have to continue to compete with each other with price and quality.
In fact, this new ruling will likely lead to increased investment, since they’ll actually have to earn money by luring customers, instead of raking it off the top of content providers.
By melvin hunter on 02.27.15 9:17am
Investment in form of increased competition is difficult to see right now because the few choices that are available when you want internet in your home. It would have been a better victory to have the last mile unbundled and bring back the days of AOL and Earthlink. So as soon as there is real competition amoungst ISP then you can trumpet your horn about the great investment charge by ISP.
I do believe they will continue to invest but when your still the de facto monolopy of a region where is the speed of deployment coming from?
By Guantaco on 02.27.15 12:18pm
Right, but the ISPs are claiming that this regulation will stifle investment, when in reality, they haven’t been investing meaningfully for the last 20 years BECAUSE they have monopolies. The anti-netnuetrality sentiment would have given them LESS reason to invest, because their revenue would come from leveraging their existing monopoly by raking money from content providers…
Instead of providing their existing customers with infrastructure that can actually handle the existing load. They want to reduce the load by charging everyone more for less…
By melvin hunter on 02.28.15 12:17pm
ISPs have not been investing meaningfully for last 20 yrs ?? :)
How about vast data networks and fiber to the house, hundreds of channels, On Demand TV, Net DVR, 100+Mbps data services, 2G/3G and 4G networks? Twenty yrs back 56k modem was state of the art and someone (Telcos/ISPs and their shareholders) paid for this vast infrastructure to be built.
Oh yea … no investment in last 20 yrs by the ISPs :)
By heynow_1 on 03.02.15 7:09pm
The Internet just buffered.
By ranepowel on 02.26.15 1:04pm
An important blow against Cable Company Fuckery!
By Oxtail on 02.26.15 1:09pm
All right-wing Randian thinkers have to be really bummed by this decision; more oversight and regulation. To be a so-called Libertarian free-market thinker and yet actually be happy with todays decision is completely incongruous to your beliefs about how laissez faire free-markets should operate
By Pete.Roe on 02.26.15 1:09pm
And you’ll see just how great it is once it’s implemented. I’m with Mark Cuban on this one.
By KajunBowser on 02.26.15 1:11pm
Once what is implemented? Stopping fast lane agreements like the one with Netflix? I’m confused at what exactly you think is going to be implemented.
By Oxtail on 02.26.15 1:13pm
I pay Netflix for their content; if Netflix makes a business decision to spend that money on improving my experience (by direct peering), that’s Netflix business decision. I don’t give a shit how Netflix spends their money. And neither should you; you should only care about the quality of service.
If we lived in a world with fiber to the curb everywhere, or nothing but switched VCs, a direct agreement between the client and the ISP to allocate certain bands for my use (i.e., on my pipe, no television needs to be allocated; I’ll just stream everything) could foster the sort of end-user neutrality The Verge commentariat envisions.
Unfortunately, this isn’t the world we live in. My next door neighbor and I share the same bundled pipe, and for my neighbor to experience TV service that has had standard non-interference for the last 70 years, Comcast must allocate part of their network to TV allocation.
Treating all data as identical assumes all end users are connecting the same. We’re not.
When The Daily Show starts buffering, true net neutrality will be seen as the joke it is. Regulate data handling? Sure. True neutrality for all data bits? Your paid Netflix streaming is subsidizing your neighbor’s illegal bittorrenting of the same content.
By harkening on 02.26.15 1:26pm
What a great customer you are. When your network connection goes to shit, instead of blaming your ISP for not being able to maintain a 5mb/s connection when you’re paying for 50mb/s broadband, you lash out at your neighbor for screwing you over by using 1/10th of their internet connection more often than you think they should.
You’re the model meek and accommodating customer that cable companies wish everyone would be.
By Oxtail on 02.26.15 1:33pm
No, I call Comcast and complain. But I don’t blame logical pipe allocation. I blame poor switch management, wiring, channel interference and all sorts of other things.
By harkening on 02.26.15 1:47pm