Did You Ever Imagine That The Trump Regime WOULDN'T Try To Kill Net Neutrality?

While everyone was obsessing over the Trump Regime's Reverse-Robin-Hood tax proposal and the jolt of electricity the Frankstein monster known as TrumpCare just got, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, moved to kill net neutrality. He said that "high-speed internet service should no longer be treated like a public utility with strict rules, as it is now. The move would, in effect, largely leave the industry to police itself."

At The Nation, John Nichols, went so far as to write that "no act of the recklessly authoritarian Trump administration poses a greater threat to the democratic discourse than the now-announced plan to gut net-neutrality rules. With newspapers dying, radio syndicated, broadcast television commercialized beyond relevance, and cable television mired in scandal and dead-end punditry, the Internet is the essential tool for the communication of ideas and the mobilization of those who choose to resist the autocratic impulses of Trump and his crony-capitalist cabal... Pai, wants to throttle net neutrality-- the first amendment of the Internet that guarantees equal protection for all voices in the digital universe where we now live."

Former FCC Commissioner Michael Copps warned that, “By reopening the FCC’s historic 2015 Open Internet Order, the FCC is jeopardizing core protections for online free speech and competition. Chairman Pai appears more interested in currying favor with cable and telecom industry lobbyists than in serving the millions of Americans who wrote and called to urge the commission, during the original rule-making, to provide strong protections against online blocking, throttling, or censorship.”

“Chairman Pai is kissing the ring of the Big Money lobbyists who too often call the shots in the Trump Administration,” declared Copps, who now works with Common Cause and other groups seeking to defend an open Internet. “Ending net neutrality would be a body blow to the open dialogue upon which successful self-government depends. It would be a red light for democracy and a green light for cable and telecom giants to control where we go and what we do on the internet.”

...“FCC Chairman Ajit Pai is determined to give control of the internet to companies like Comcast, AT&T and Verizon, no matter the cost to our economy and democracy,” says Craig Aaron, the president of the media reform group Free Press. “He’s continuing to ignore the mountains of evidence showing that the agency’s Net Neutrality rules are protecting internet users while spurring on investment and innovation.”

...Gutting net neutrality, as Pai proposes, opens the way for telecommunications giants to colonize the Internet in the same way that they have done to broadcast and cable platforms-- replacing civic and democratic values with commercial and entertainment dictates. Despite claims made to the contrary, if Trump and Pai succeed, the United States will end up with an “information superhighway” for messages favored by corporate elites who can pay the tolls and a dirt road for messages from citizens who hold to the quaint American faith that human beings should have rights and corporations should have regulations.

“It makes no sense,” says Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey, a longtime advocate for an open Internet. “We cannot keep the promise of net neutrality openness and freedom without the rules that ensure it.”

As the NY Times explained, "The plan is Mr. Pai’s most forceful action in his race to roll back rules that govern telecommunications, cable and broadcasting companies, which he says are harmful to business. But he is certain to face a contentious battle with the consumers and tech companies that rallied around the existing rules, which are meant to prevent broadband providers like AT&T and Comcast from giving special treatment to any streaming videos, news sites and other content."

Pai has opposed the current rules for years, and he voted against them as a commissioner. Critics of his ideas for changing the rules say making any commitments only voluntary would pave the way for the creation of business practices that harm competition.

“It would put consumers at the mercy of phone and cable companies,” said Craig Aaron, president of the consumer advocacy group Free Press. “In a fantasy world, all would be fine with a pinkie swear not to interrupt pathways and portals to the internet despite a history of doing that.”

AT&T and the other Internet providers that were so happy when the GOP voted to allow them to sell their customers' personal data without seeking permission, are overjoyed about this as well. AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson, who has spent gargantuan amounts of money lobbying and bribing congressional conservatives: "We applaud F.C.C. Chairman Pai’s initiative to remove this stifling regulatory cloud over the internet. It was illogical for the F.C.C. in 2015 to abandon that light-touch approach and instead regulate the internet under an 80-year-old law designed to set rates for the rotary-dial-telephone era."

About 800 tech start-ups and investors, organized by the Silicon Valley incubator Y Combinator and the San Francisco policy advocacy group Engine, protested the unwinding of net neutrality in a letter sent to Mr. Pai on Wednesday.

“Without net neutrality, the incumbents who provide access to the internet would be able to pick winners or losers in the market,” they wrote in the letter.

So far, Google and Netflix, the most vocal proponents of net neutrality in previous years, have not spoken individually about Mr. Pai’s proposal. Speaking through their trade group, the Internet Association, they said the broadband and net neutrality rules should stay intact.

“Rolling back these rules or reducing the legal sustainability of the order will result in a worse internet for consumers and less innovation online,” Michael Beckerman, chief executive of the Internet Association, said in a statement.

The Congressman from Silicon Valley, Ro Khanna-- who had previously warned that Pai would be "one of the worst picks possible" for FCC chair and is nothing but a mouthpiece for the telecom industry and an opponent of free competition. Yesterday he said that "Pai needs to cease his endless assault on internet freedom and net neutrality. This proposal would concentrate power to a handful of internet service providers and hinder innovation for both startups and consumers. FCC commissioners should refuse to accept Pai’s proposal and keep the current legal framework that guarantees a free and open internet. To do otherwise puts our economy and what this country stands for at risk."