Trump FCC Ditching Effective Net Neutrality Regs; Will Thune Serve Openness or Corporate Profits?

South Dakota needs the openness of net neutrality. The Trump Federal Communications Commission is wrong to take it away and let Internet service providers favor the writing, podcasts, and videos of the richest voices.

Back in 2015, Senator John Thune and Representative Kristi Noem said they both supported net neutrality but opposed the Obama FCC enforcing it. Newly minted Senator Mike Rounds, already firmly in the pocket of his rich donors, said money ought to be able to buy all the bandwidth it wants.

Following the Trump FCC’s announcement of the intended repeal of its net neutrality rules, Senator Thune said that removing the FCC rules is “an improvement,” but he now wants Congress to “create long term certainty for the Internet ecosystem” by passing “a bipartisan law.” Senator Thune called for “permanent Net Neutrality rules through the legislative process.” In a January speech to the State of the Net 2017 conference, Senator Thune made a reasonable case for law to more stably protect net neutrality than regulation:

Another area where I would like to achieve bipartisan agreement is on legislation to protect the Open Internet.  We need clear and reasonable rules for the digital road that Internet companies, broadband providers, and end users can easily understand.  Complex and ambiguous regulations that shift with the political winds aren’t in anyone’s best interest.  For people to get the maximum benefit possible from the Internet, they need certainty about what the rules are, and most importantly, what the rules will be in the coming years.  And the only way to achieve this is for Congress to pass bipartisan legislation.

I have worked with my colleagues over the last two years to find a legislative solution, and while we haven’t gotten there yet, I remain committed to the cause.  Who knows, the reality of a Republican FCC may help inspire some of my Democrat colleagues to embrace the idea that a bipartisan, legislative solution is the best possible outcome [Senator John Thune, prepared remarks, State of the Net 2017, 2017.01.23].

Yet Senator Thune signaled that his preferred legislative solution would still lean toward giving rich corporations the power to win favored status for their content:

Yet over the last several years the FCC pursued an aggressively activist and partisan agenda that put government edicts ahead of real consumer desires in setting a course for the Internet.  Speaking about new economic opportunities on the Internet, the last FCC chairman declared that – and I quote – “government is where we will work this out.”  I don’t know about you, but I think the marketplace should be the center of the debate over how our digital networks will function, not the FCC.  And I believe consumers and job creators should be the ones deciding about new technologies, not the government.

For instance, some Internet providers are offering service plans that allow you to stream video, music, or other content for free.  These innovative offers are a sign of dynamic and aggressive competition in the marketplace.  Yet two weeks ago, the outgoing FCC issued a report raising, what they called, “serious concerns” that such practices “likely…harm consumers.”  They seem to think being able to do more online for less money is bad for consumers.  Meanwhile, consumers themselves seem to strongly disagree, because these free data offerings are quite popular [Thune, 2017.01.23].

If we can’t trust Senator Thune and the Trump-drunk Congress to protect the open Internet from plutocratic propaganda, will we have to do it ourselves? One eager reader forwards me the idea of Internet cooperatives to keep all of the Internet flowing freely into our homes:

…these small operators can protect open internet access from the handful of large ISPs that stand to pocket the profits from net neutrality rollbacks that the Trump administration announced Nov. 21. That’s according to Christopher Mitchell, who is the director of Community Broadband Projects, a project of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance. Mitchell, who has been tracking and advocating community-owned broadband networks for a decade, hopes that this will be the moment when people rebel against the administration’s attack on net neutrality and expand rural cooperative and municipal ISPs.

“The FCC is basically taking the regulations off of big companies, but local companies can still offer high-quality internet access at good prices,” Mitchell says.

Without net neutrality, broadband providers will be able to charge more for better access and faster speeds, or be able to restrict traffic to preferred business partners over competitors. More independent ISPs can offer consumers a wider variety of choices.

“No one will have to offer prioritized content in the ways that we fear AT&T and Comcast will. So local investments can preserve access to the open internet,” Mitchell says [Sammi-Jo Lee, “How Internet Co-ops Can Protect Us from Net Neutrality Rollbacks,” The Liberal Network, 2017.11.25].

Co-ops work in rural America largely because they don’t have to compete with AT&T and Comcast. The big corporations don’t see a buck to be made in the bush, so co-ops can fill a gap. Would co-ops be able to get a foothold against corporate competitors in urban areas and preserve net neutrality for the majority of Americans?

FCC chairman Ajit Pai claims that the Internet was hunky-dory before the Obama FCC imposed its “heavy-handed” net neutrality regulations. But I haven’t seen that alleged heavy hand weighing down any of my daily Internet usage. I get my Netflix, YouTube, and whatever other content I want. I post my blog, and Dakota Free Press goes hither and yon without anyone having to pay an extra fee to keep their local content from being crowded off the Information Superhighway by big global corporate media. Net neutrality is working for us regular folks; I’d rather keep the rules we have than roll the dice on whatever corporately lobbied, Fox-informed Trumpism Senator Thune might pass.