[NewsPoster]

A draft bill intended to resolve the current threats to net neutrality was announced today in the US Congress, with plans to begin hearings on it as early as next Wednesday by the US Energy & Commerce Committees. The bill purports to ensure net neutrality by prohibiting blocking, throttling, paid prioritization, and a number of other desirable perks, but also specifically strips the FCC of its existing authority to protect consumers and encourage competition.

The bill takes many queues from the FCC's original 2010 Open Internet Order. Rather than becoming "common carriers" under Title II with forbearance -- as FCC Chair Tom Wheeler is likely to propose -- under the draft bill Internet service providers would be classified as "information carriers," which are defined under Title I of the Communications Act -- and more lightly regulated. It's interesting to note that the bill's proposal is the plan that could have gone through under the FCC previously, if Verizon hadn't sued.

In that case, the Appeals Court determined that key parts of the FCC order that ensured network neutrality were invalid because the agency at the time opted to treat the carriers as "information services" rather than "common carriers." The court therefore found that the FCC "failed to establish that the anti-discrimination and anti-blocking rules do not impose per se common carrier obligations," ruling "we vacate those portions of the Open Internet Order."

This would suggest that, should the bill pass, the stated goals of the law would be completely unenforceable due to previous court precedent and the bill's stripping of authority from the FCC. This may possibly be the actual goal of the legislation, which was put forth by Representative Fred Upton (R-MI) head of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and Senator John Thune (R-SD), head of the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee. Republicans and most large ISPs have been strongly opposed to the notion of Title II regulation of carriers, and the bill could be a toothless attempt to take such regulation off the table but replace it with reduced FCC authority and no other enforcement mechanism for the bill's stated goals.

The bill calls for a number of admirable ideas, including blocking all data throttling or "paid prioritization" deals, but Section 2 of the proposal amends Section 706 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 with a new subsection (d) that says, "No Grant of Authority – The Commission or a State commission with regulatory jurisdiction over telecommunications services and may not rely on this section as a grant of authority." This would effectively prohibit the FCC from being able to take any meaningful action on consumer complaints of ISP misbehavior or abuse.

Section 706 isn't only what the FCC used to establish net neutrality rules -- removing section 706 authority from the FCC would also stymie action on petitions submitted to the FCC from some 20 states where local legislation is considered to be blocking the build-out of municipal broadband networks in areas that are under or unserved by ISPs who don't consider the areas profitable enough.

The full text of the draft can be found in this PDF. Opposition groups have already come out against the bill, urging citizens to contact Congress and ask representatives to vote against the measure.

[pairof9s]

Then this bill needs to go back to committee for rewrite or full out rejection. ISP/Cable companies have rode this gravy train long enough.

[OkieDoc]

I smell Big Telecommunications Companies behind this

[just a poster]

Concerned Americans should be asking the following questions:

- how does this bill strip the FCC of its existing authority to protect consumers and encourage competition?
- What is the FCC currently doing to protect consumers and encourage competition?
- Are consumers experiencing blocking, throttling, or paid prioritization?
- Assuming any of the above are occurring - and particularly that building infrastructure to detect traffic in order to block, throttle or prioritize it costs money or staff time - are there any savings to taxpayers by removing these "features"?
- how will this affect "illegal" downloads via P2P software on consumer networks? Will these continue to be monitored, blocked, throttled or prioritized? Who is currently monitoring, blocking, throttling or prioritizing them and who's paying for these features?
- If no current blocking, throttling, or prioritizing is occurring but services like youtube, google, amazon, bing etc are asking for improved performance, who should bear the brunt of the costs for building up improved infrastructures for them?
- what will it cost taxpayers and is it fair for taxpayers to cover these costs?
- will our monthly service fees/bills increase?

Just wondering.

[Charles Martin]

Yes, it is good for people to ask questions about the proposal, but the majority of the answers you ask are either explained in the article or in our previous coverage on these issues, or on the FCC's website. There's a link to the draft bill in the first sentence of the article -- take a moment and read it.

[just a poster]

I guess the news isn't good enough to give a straight answer, is it Mr Martin?