The U.S. government has repealed net neutrality

A leading lobbying group for Amazon, Facebook, Google, Netflix, Twitter and other tech giants said Friday that it would be joining the coming legal crusade to restore the U.S. government’s net neutrality rules.

The Washington, D.C.-based Internet Association specifically plans to join a lawsuit as an intervening party, aiding the challenge to FCC Chairman Ajit Pai’s vote in December to repeal regulations that required internet providers like AT&T and Comcast* to treat all web traffic equally, its leader confirmed to Recode.

Roughly a month after the Federal Communications Commission voted to scrap the U.S. government’s net neutrality rules, the agency has released the full, final text of its repeal.

Generally, it’s the same as the plan that Republican Chairman Ajit Pai unveiled in the weeks before the vote: It terminates FCC rules requiring internet providers to treat all web traffic equally, while shifting enforcement of the open web to another federal agency.

The United States is about to go to war with itself over net neutrality.

In the hours after the Trump administration scrapped rules that required internet providers to treat all web traffic equally, a handful of states mobilized in a bid to reverse the decision by the Federal Communications Commission in court — or perhaps write their own new regulations as a replacement.

The FCC today eliminated net neutrality rules that required internet providers to treat all web traffic equally. But for many Americans, access to the internet has long been unequal.

The dark blue on the map below represents areas where access to high-speed internet is lowest. The lighter colors represent greater internet access. In a number of places in the U.S., especially in the South, more than a third of the population doesn’t have access to high-speed internet at home, according to mapping company Esri, which constructed this map using data from market research firm GfK MRI.

The FCC voted to repeal net neutrality rules today in a 3-2 vote along party lines. These are the statements from two pro-repeal Republican members of the Commission, Chairman Ajit Pai and Commissioner Brendan Carr.

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai:

The FCC just voted to repeal net neutrality rules. These are the statements from the dissenting Democratic members of the commission.

Today’s the day Disney announces its $60 billion deal to buy the majority of 21st Century Fox. Expect the press release this morning. The conventional wisdom is that the deal, which would give Disney control of Fox’s movie studio and TV studio but not its broadcast network or Fox News, is aimed at competing with Netflix. It would also represent a very big bet on TV sports for Disney, which already owns ESPN. And it puts Hulu’s future in question. [Wall Street Journal]

The Trump administration’s Federal Communications Commission is voting to repeal net neutrality this morning. The FCC’s chief technology officer, Eric Burger, who was appointed in October by Republican Chairman Ajit Pai, warned yesterday in an internal email that the No. 1 issue with the repeal of the Obama-era regulations is concern that internet service providers will block or throttle specific websites. Here’s how to watch the vote live. [Margaret Harding McGill]

The Trump administration is set to repeal the rules that require internet service providers to treat all web traffic equally.

After months of debate, the Federal Communications Commission — led by Republican Chairman Ajit Pai — will officially vote on Thursday, Dec. 14, to eliminate net neutrality protections implemented under former President Barack Obama. The meeting begins at 10:30 am ET / 7:30 am PT.

This is a contributed piece by Michael K. Powell, lobbyist for the cable and telecom industry and former FCC Chairman.

Tomorrow, the Federal Communications Commission will vote to restore light-touch regulation and promote investment in internet networks. Opponents of this action have responded with hyperbole, demagoguery and even personal threats. New-age Nostradamuses predict the internet will stop working, democracy will collapse, plague will ensue and locusts will cover the land.

Repealing net neutrality, a movement led by Federal Communications Commission chairman Ajit Pai and expected to pass on Dec. 14, gets people really worked up online: Millions wrote in to the FCC between April and August this year, although the exact number is in question.

So, why do people care so much about how the internet is regulated? And what would happen if the net neutrality rules on the chopping block — the ones implemented in 2015 by a Democratic-led FCC under President Obama — went away?

Ajit Pai either broke or saved the internet in the short time since he took over the Federal Communications Commission. It just depends on who you ask.

In the eyes of Republicans, media conglomerates and telecom giants that aspire to grow even larger, Pai’s tenure at the FCC has been liberating. Tapped by President Donald Trump in the weeks after his inauguration, Pai immediately began to ease restrictions on who can own what, while laying waste to years of regulations implemented by Democrats. That included net neutrality, or rules that require broadband providers to treat all web traffic equally.

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai thinks everyone from Twitter to Cher has it wrong when they say that his efforts to roll back the U.S. government’s existing net neutrality rules will spell the death of the web.

Instead, Pai said during an event in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday that tech giants could pose the greatest threat by discriminating against viewpoints on the internet. “They might cloak their advocacy in the public interest,” he said, “but the real interest of these internet giants is in using the regulatory process to cement their dominance in the internet economy.”

The Trump administration on Tuesday set in motion its plan to repeal virtually all of the U.S. government’s existing net neutrality rules — a move that will soon deliver another major deregulatory win to telecom giants like AT&T, Charter, Comcast* and Verizon.

In a forthcoming proposal from Ajit Pai, the Republican chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, the country’s telecom agency is set to eliminate open internet protections that prevent broadband providers from blocking, slowing down or otherwise interfering with web traffic.