Indeed, that “forced vote” might explain why two Republicans – John Kennedy of Louisiana and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska – chose to break ranks at the last minute. It must still be voted on in the House of Representatives, however, and signed into law by President Trump.
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Net neutrality is the principle that all traffic on the internet should be treated the same.
“I don’t think we can expect that our experience of the internet will be radically different the next day”, she said.
The 2015 rules were meant to ensure a free and open internet, give consumers equal access to Web content and bar broadband service providers from favoring their own material or others’.
Republicans in Washington largely support the FCC’s policy change, arguing the net neutrality rules subjected internet service providers to burdensome regulations.
The measure now moves to the House of Representatives, where an identical resolution, sponsored by Pennsylvania Rep. Mike Doyle, already has more than 160 co-sponsors. He said he supports a “free and open internet” but disagreed with Democrats on the “regulatory framework to enforce these rules”. “We shouldn’t do that with the internet either”.
However, while this is a victory for net neutrality advocates, it does not represent the end of the story. Originally passed in 2015 and upheld by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in 2016, the rules required that internet service providers like AT&T, Comcast and Verizon treat all web traffic equally.
Supporters of net neutrality have pointed out, however, that without the Obama administration rules, internet providers could easily create online “fast lanes” that privileged whatever content the company prefers and “slow lanes” for everything else. “Following the Senate’s action today, I’m calling on the House to act now and pass this resolution reinstating net neutrality protections”.
Democrats are indeed guilty of stretching out the repeal effort to serve political ends, and may even be hoping to keep net neutrality out of new legislation in the hope that they can do exactly the same thing that the FCC has done this time but in reverse under a new administration. “In the absence of rules and laws, competition is key to giving people the ability to choose a net neutral provider”. They say just trust us.
The bill uses Congress’s powers under the Congressional Review Act, a little-known piece of legislation that up to now, had nearly exclusively been used by Republicans to overturn federal rules put in place by the Obama administration.
“The Senate, in bipartisan fashion today, took the first step forward in preserving the strong internet economy that is seven percent of our GDP, but thirteen percent of the Northwest economy”, said Senator Cantwell. “Other than health care and taxes, this is one of the issues that has motivated most grassroots activity, ” he said. It applies only to the telecom carriers that provide our Internet connections, not to the companies like Facebook that provide services over that connection.
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“Net neutrality is the free speech issue of our time”, said Sen.
