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Zero-Rating Harms Poor People, Public Interest Groups Tell FCC (vice.com)

An anonymous reader links to an article on Motherboard: The nation's largest internet service providers are undermining US open internet rules, threatening free speech, and disproportionately harming poor people by using a controversial industry practice called "zero-rating," a coalition of public interest groups wrote in a letter to federal regulators on Monday. Companies like Comcast, Verizon and AT&T use zero-rating, which refers to a variety of practices that exempt certain services from monthly data caps, to undercut "the spirit and the text" of federal rules designed to protect net neutrality, the principle that all content on the internet should be equally accessible, the groups wrote. Zero-rated plans "distort competition, thwart innovation, threaten free speech, and restrict consumer choice -- all harms the rules were meant to prevent," the groups wrote. "These harms tend to fall disproportionately on low-income communities and communities of color, who tend to rely on mobile networks as their primary or exclusive means of access to the internet."

2 of 205 comments (clear)

  1. Oh, shut up... by Jawnn · · Score: 2, Funny

    ...you whiny liberal bitches. This is the free market at work. If the telecoms don't want to waste their time on squeezing money from low-lifes and bottom-feeders like "the poor", they don't have to. They should be free to run their businesses in whatever way they find most profitable. Right? So just STFU about net neutrality, and monopolies, all the rest of your socialist ideas.

  2. Re:can someone give the TL;DR by rjstegbauer · · Score: 3, Funny

    Whoooosh?