All Your Net Neutrality Questions Answered

As of December 14, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has officially decided to repeal Net Neutrality, with a 3-2 vote. For those who are not already aware, here is what Net Neutrality is and what it means for everyday internet users:

What is Net Neutrality?

Net Neutrality is the concept that internet providers, such as Verizon, Spectrum, etc., cannot do anything to hinder your access to any part of the internet. This means that they cannot cause your internet connection to work slower (throttling), block your access to any websites, charge money for better or faster access to specific websites (paid prioritization), or cut off your connection entirely based on how you are using their service. It is essentially a non-discrimination law for the internet.

How is Net Neutrality defined under the law?

According to the Report and Order on Remand, Declaratory Ruling, and Order written by the FCC: “Because the record overwhelmingly supports adopting rules and demonstrates that three specific practices invariably harm the open Internet—Blocking, Throttling, and Paid Prioritization—this Order bans each of them, applying the same rules to both fixed and mobile broadband Internet access service.” Broadband internet is an internet connection that is not dial-up, so it is fast and always accessible. The law defines Net Neutrality as the openness of the internet regardless of what the user chooses to access, and these users must not have the option to pay a higher price for better access to certain websites over other users.

How did Net Neutrality come to be?

A law professor at Columbia University, Tim Wu, coined the term in 2003 in his paper “Network Neutrality, Broadband Discrimination.” The paper discussed neutrality between applications and between data and Quality of Service sensitive traffic. His work also offered some ideas for legislation to solve the problems he identified. Wu was invited by the FCC to help draft the first laws on Network Neutrality, and has since written multiple other papers that are branches off of his original idea.

What are some examples of violations of Net Neutrality?

In 2004, the The Madison Rivers Communications Company was fined $15,000 by the FCC for restricting access to Vonage, who was a rival of theirs. In 2007, Comcast was accused of throttling the uploads of peer-to-peer file sharing, and did not end this practice until the FCC forced them to. In 2012, AT&T announced that only users with a shared mobile data plan would be able to use data to FaceTime; users without this plan would have to use WiFi in order to use FaceTime. But Net Neutrality stopped this from occurring.

However, there is still a way for Net Neutrality to be preserved. Through the Congressional Review Act, Congress has the power issue a resolution of disapproval and override the FCC’s decision. While there is only a 60-day window for Congress to do this, and the resolution will need either presidential support or two-thirds support from the House and Senate, Massachusetts senator Ed Markey is already leading the effort to nullify this decision.

Many states across the country are also suing the FCC for their decision. According to California senator Scott Wiener, the decision on rules for the open internet should be left to the states.

“We don’t think that the FCC has the power to stop states from enacting our own rules. In fact, the FCC has lost that argument in court before, so we’re going to move forward,” he said. “I think we’re going to have a lot of momentum.”

Those who feel that Net Neutrality is necessary and should remain in effect should text “RESIST” to 50409.