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Net Neutrality Makes Comeback in California; Lawmakers Agree To Strict Rules (arstechnica.com)
California lawmakers announced a deal Thursday to restore key protections in a widely watched bill to give Californians strong net neutrality protections. From a report: The California net neutrality bill that could impose the toughest rules in the country is being resurrected. The bill was approved in its strongest form by the California Senate, but was then gutted by the State Assembly's communications committee, which approved the bill only after eliminating provisions opposed by AT&T and cable lobbyists. Bill author Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) has been negotiating with Communications Committee Chairman Miguel Santiago (D-Los Angeles) and other lawmakers since then, and announced the results today. Wiener said the agreement with Santiago and other lawmakers resulted in "legislation implementing the strongest net neutrality protections in the nation." A fact sheet distributed by Wiener's office today said the following: Under this agreement, SB 822 will contain strong net neutrality protections and prohibit blocking websites, speeding up or slowing down websites or whole classes of applications such as video, and charging websites for access to an ISP's subscribers or for fast lanes to those subscribers. ISPs will also be prohibited from circumventing these protections at the point where data enters their networks and from charging access fees to reach ISP customers. SB 822 will also ban ISPs from violating net neutrality by not counting the content and websites they own against subscribers' data caps. This kind of abusive and anti-competitive "zero rating", which leads to lower data caps for everyone, would be prohibited, while "zero-rating" plans that don't harm consumers are not banned.
Once again, it's up to California to show the rest of the country how it's done.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Congress delegated to the FCC broad authority to regulate Title II communications in the 1950's, at the time this was basically telephone service because the public had come to believe this was an essential life saving service which it obviously was. But Congress also delegated to the FCC the ability to decide what constituted Title II service offerings because they understood they couldn't vote on every little new thing that came out.
During the Clinton administration the FCC voted to provide light regulations protections for "data services" as part of the 1996 deregulation of data services as the internet came into being. GW Bush's FCC went a step further in the early 00's and voted to remove all Title II protections. During the remaining years of the Bush administration and comments from leaders in the telecom sector (particularly the head of ATT) it because apparent that the new no-regulation stance gave these companies the legal ability to essentially blackmail services operating via the internet by threatening to slow down their service if they didn't pay the telecom provider a fee. This would be the death of an open internet with the Telecoms and Cable companies deciding the winners and loosers in the market. In particular it would give them the ability to "tax" into oblivion any service that competed against their own offerings. Comcast immediately took advantage of this to try to blackmail Netflix.
This birthed the net-neutrality movement and during the first years of the Obama administration they tried to implement policies to stop this blackmail with light handed regulations while not declaring the service Title II again. The FCC was then immediately sued by all the telecoms as they are almost every time they do anything and lost in court, with the final court ruling saying that without a designation that data services were Title II that congress had never given the FCC authority to regulate these services. So as a regulatory action in the final years of the Obama administration they voted to redesignate Data services as Title II and implemented the lightest regulation they could, giving them authority to review and revoke agreements like those between Netflix and Comcast where Comcast was using last mile access to toll competing services. They required a minimal amount of reporting by companies with more than 100K subscribers and took the position of not acting unless a complaint was received.
Trump upon entry immediately undid the Title II designation but then as the last sentence in the order tried to claim that this new regulation blocks state level regulation in direct contradiction to the previous court ruling. Were the FCC to try to challenge the California law they would immediately lose based on that ruling because the FCC has no authority unless it's Title II.
One of the purposes of federal regulation is to offer a level playing field across the US, when you eliminate all regulation you give the states authority to regulate it themselves. This is what the Trump administration is finding out, by trying to undo the Title II designation they opened up the pathway for States to regulate it themselves. The same has happened with EPA's attempts to undo minimum CAFE and pollution requirements put in place during the Obama administration, regulations that were heavily supported by numerous states. The result has been a dozen states passing their own and conflicting requirements creating a regulatory patchwork that makes it harder for car manufacturers.
But this is what happens when you put inexperienced nitwits or idealouges in place at these government agencies. You destroy the regulatory framework that protected these business from state level regulation. That's not a win, the problem is the right's come to believe that simply eliminating the regulation is a better idea that providing a legitimate process and negotiation with the stakeholders (businesses, state and local governments and activists) on sensible regulations that the entire country can live with that protect the business and the people.