Slashdot Mirror
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.
Finally California does something right in it's government, assuming the full regulations are as clear as are stated in the summary. Take those exact words and make it federal law.
How are cable/telecom companies going to possibly argue that the FCC's rule preempts this when the FCC stated rather bluntly in the order repealing net neutrality that they were doing it because they do not believe the FCC has the authority to impose those regulations. The Constitution is quite clear that any power not claimed by the federal government defaults to the states. So if the federal government is abdicating responsibility for regulating telecom and cable companies, it means the states are free to do so.
You would think that after the first debacle with Verizon suing and getting everyone classified as Title II carriers would have taught the industry to be careful what they wish for. Now instead of one consistent rule across the entire country they have to contend with as many as 50 different sets of rules.