{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.leahy.senate.gov/press/leahy-statement-regarding-the-fccs-rollback-of-net-neutrality-protections", "Leahy Statement Regarding the FCC's Rollback of Net Neutrality Protections", "2017-12-05", "2017", "2017-12", "Democrat", "House", "VT", "Patrick Leahy", "L000174", "www.leahy.senate.gov", null, null, "legacy", "12.05.17\n\t\t\t Leahy Statement Regarding the FCC's Rollback of Net Neutrality Protections \n\t\t\t\n\t\t\tNext week, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will consider a proposed rule that, if approved, will end \u201cnet neutrality\u201d as we know it and will threaten the foundation of a free and open Internet.\u00a0 Net neutrality is the simple proposition that Internet service providers should treat all Internet traffic the same; they should not be able to exploit their power to charge for preferred treatment, allowing big corporations to dominate the Internet.\r\nThe Chairman of the FCC, Ajit Pai, wants the FCC to undo its protections for net neutrality.\u00a0 His proposed ruling is perversely styled as \u201cRestoring Internet Freedom,\u201d when in fact it would do the opposite.\u00a0 It would allow Internet service providers to decide which websites will be privileged and which will be throttled or even blocked.\u00a0 Make no mistake:\u00a0 This will mean that the big firms that can afford the \u201cfast lane\u201d will be protected, while harming consumers, start-ups, and potentially even freedom of speech online.\r\nAlarmingly, Chairman Pai has decided to ignore millions of comments submitted by individuals across the country, citing concerns that they are not \u201cunique.\u201d\u00a0 As a member of Congress accountable to my constituents, this is a particularly offensive posture.\u00a0 \u201cUnique\u201d or not, comments and concerns submitted to my office by Vermonters are treated with the same weight and value as any other.\u00a0 Until the FCC fully and meaningfully considers the more than 21.7 million comments it has received about this proposed rule, it should not proceed with this vote.\r\nA recent New York Times article by Farhad Manjoo, entitled, \u201cThe Internet Is Dying. Repealing Net Neutrality Hastens That Death,\u201d lays out clearly why the FCC\u2019s proposed repeal of net neutrality will bring the open Internet one giant leap closer to becoming a corporate playground.\u00a0 If, as expected, Chairman Pai jams through his proposed rule change next week, it will be clear that he has done so to the benefit of a few deep-pocketed corporations and to the detriment of everyone else who relies on the Internet to support commerce, communication, and community. \u00a0I ask unanimous consent that the article by Mr. Manjoo be printed in the Record.\r\n# # # # #\r\nThe New York Times\r\nNovember 29, 2017\r\nThe Internet Is Dying. Repealing Net Neutrality Hastens That Death.\r\nBy Farhad Manjoo\r\nThe internet is dying.\r\nSure, technically, the internet still works. Pull up Facebook on your phone and you will still see your second cousin\u2019s baby pictures. But that isn\u2019t really the internet. It\u2019s not the open, anyone-can-build-it network of the 1990s and early 2000s, the product of technologies created over decades through government funding and academic research, the network that helped undo Microsoft\u2019s stranglehold on the tech business and gave us upstarts like Amazon, Google, Facebook and Netflix.\r\nNope, that freewheeling internet has been dying a slow death \u2014 and a vote next month by the Federal Communications Commission to undo net neutrality would be the final pillow in its face.\r\nNet neutrality is intended to prevent companies that provide internet service from offering preferential treatment to certain content over their lines. The rules prevent, for instance, AT&T from charging a fee to companies that want to stream high-definition videos to people.\r\nBecause net neutrality shelters start-ups \u2014 which can\u2019t easily pay for fast-line access \u2014 from internet giants that can pay, the rules are just about the last bulwark against the complete corporate takeover of much of online life. When the rules go, the internet will still work, but it will look like and feel like something else altogether \u2014 a network in which business development deals, rather than innovation, determine what you experience, a network that feels much more like cable TV than the technological Wild West that gave you Napster and Netflix.\r\nIf this sounds alarmist, consider that the state of digital competition is already pretty sorry. As I\u2019ve argued regularly, much of the tech industry is at risk of getting swallowed by giants. Today\u2019s internet is lousy with gatekeepers, tollbooths and monopolists.\r\nThe five most valuable American companies \u2014 Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google and Microsoft \u2014 control much of the online infrastructure, from app stores to operating systems to cloud storage to nearly all of the online ad business. A handful of broadband companies \u2014 AT&T, Charter, Comcast and Verizon, many of which are also aiming to become content companies, because why not \u2014 provide virtually all the internet connections to American homes and smartphones.\r\nTogether these giants have carved the internet into a historically profitable system of fiefs. They have turned a network whose very promise was endless innovation into one stuck in mud, where every start-up is at the tender mercy of some of the largest corporations on the planet.\r\nMany companies feel this shift. In a letter to Ajit Pai, the F.C.C. chairman, who drafted the net neutrality repeal order, more than 200 start-ups argued this week that the order \u201cwould put small and medium-sized businesses at a disadvantage and prevent innovative new ones from even getting off the ground.\u201d This, they said, was \u201cthe opposite of the open market, with a few powerful cable and phone companies picking winners and losers instead of consumers.\u201d\r\nThis was not the way the internet was supposed to go. At its deepest technical level, the internet was designed to avoid the central points of control that now command it. The technical scheme arose from an even deeper philosophy. The designers of the internet understood that communications networks gain new powers through their end nodes \u2014 that is, through the new devices and services that plug into the network, rather than the computers that manage traffic on the network. This is known as the \u201cend-to-end\u201d principle of network design, and it basically explains why the internet led to so many more innovations than the centralized networks that came before it, such as the old telephone network.\r\nThe internet\u2019s singular power, in its early gold-rush days, was its flexibility. People could imagine a dazzling array of new uses for the network, and as quick as that, they could build and deploy them \u2014 a site that sold you books, a site that cataloged the world\u2019s information, an application that let you \u201cborrow\u201d other people\u2019s music, a social network that could connect you to anyone.\r\nYou didn\u2019t need permission for any of this stuff; some of these innovations ruined traditional industries, some fundamentally altered society, and many were legally dubious. But the internet meant you could just put it up, and if it worked, the rest of the world would quickly adopt it.\r\nBut if flexibility was the early internet\u2019s promise, it was soon imperiled. In 2003, Tim Wu, a law professor now at Columbia Law School (he\u2019s also a contributor to The New York Times), saw signs of impending corporate control over the growing internet. Broadband companies that were investing great sums to roll out faster and faster internet service to Americans were becoming wary of running an anything-goes network.\r\nSome of the new uses of the internet threatened their bottom line. People were using online services as an alternative to paying for cable TV or long-distance phone service. They were connecting devices like Wi-Fi routers, which allowed them to share their connections with multiple devices. At the time, there were persistent reports of broadband companies seeking to block or otherwise frustrate these new services; in a few years, some broadband providers would begin blocking new services outright.\r\nTo Mr. Wu, the broadband monopolies looked like a threat to the end-to-end idea that had powered the internet. In a legal journal, he outlined an idea for regulation to preserve the internet\u2019s equal-opportunity design \u2014 and hence was born \u201cnet neutrality.\u201d\r\nThough it has been through a barrage of legal challenges and resurrections, some form of net neutrality has been the governing regime on the internet since 2005. The new F.C.C. order would undo the idea completely; companies would be allowed to block or demand payment for certain traffic as they liked, as long as they disclosed the arrangements.\r\nAt the moment, broadband companies are promising not to act unfairly, and they argue that undoing the rules would give them further incentive to invest in their broadband capacity, ultimately improving the internet.\r\nBrian Hart, an F.C.C. spokesman, said broadband companies would still be covered by antitrust laws and other rules meant to prevent anticompetitive behavior. He noted that Mr. Pai\u2019s proposals would simply return the network to an earlier, pre-network-neutrality regulatory era.\r\n\u201cThe internet flourished under this framework before, and it will again,\u201d he said.\r\nBroadband companies are taking a similar line. When I pointed out to a Comcast spokeswoman that the company\u2019s promises were only voluntary \u2014 that nothing will prevent Comcast from one day creating special tiers of internet service with bundled content, much like the way it now sells cable TV \u2014 she suggested I was jumping the gun.\r\nAfter all, people have been predicting the end of the internet for years. In 2003, Michael Copps, a Democratically appointed commissioner on the F.C.C. who was alarmed by the central choke points then taking command of the internet, argued that \u201cwe could be witnessing the beginning of the end of the internet as we know it.\u201d\r\nIt\u2019s been a recurrent theme among worriers ever since. In 2014, the last time it looked like net neutrality would get gutted, Nilay Patel, editor of the Verge, declared the internet dead (he used another word for \u201cdead\u201d). And he did it again this year, anticipating Mr. Pai\u2019s proposal.\r\nBut look, you might say: Despite the hand-wringing, the internet has kept on trucking. Start-ups are still getting funded and going public. Crazy new things still sometimes get invented and defy all expectations; Bitcoin, which is as Wild West as they come, just hit $10,000 on some exchanges.\r\nWell, O.K. But a vibrant network doesn\u2019t die all at once. It takes time and neglect; it grows weaker by the day, but imperceptibly, so that one day we are living in a digital world controlled by giants and we come to regard the whole thing as normal.\r\nIt\u2019s not normal. It wasn\u2019t always this way. The internet doesn\u2019t have to be a corporate playground. That\u2019s just the path we\u2019ve chosen.\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t Press Contact \n\t\t\t\tDavid Carle: 202-224-3693", 1, "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z", "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.leahy.senate.gov/press/leahy-statement-regarding-the-fccs-rollback-of-net-neutrality-protections"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 1.6257190145552158, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}