Lawmakers In California Cave To Industry Lobbying, And Backtrack With Weakened Net Neutrality Bill

After the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) acted last year to repeal net neutrality rules, those protections officially expired on June 11th. Meanwhile, legislators in California have acted to protect their state's residents. In January, State Senator Weiner introduced in January a proposed bill, which was passed by the California Senate three weeks ago.

Since then, some politicians have countered with a modified bill lacking strong protections. C/Net reported:

"The vote on Wednesday in a California Assembly committee hearing advanced a bill that implements some net neutrality protections, but it scaled back all the measures of the bill that had gone beyond the rules outlined in the Federal Communications Commission's 2015 regulation, which was officially taken off the books by the Trump Administration's commission last week. In a surprise move, the vote happened before the hearing officially started,..."

Weiner's original bill was considered the "gold standard" of net neutrality protections for consumers because:

"... it went beyond the FCC's 2015 net neutrality "bright line" rules by including provisions like a ban on zero-rating, a business practice that allows broadband providers like AT&T to exempt their own services from their monthly wireless data caps, while services from competitors are counted against those limits. The result is a market controlled by internet service providers like AT&T, who can shut out the competition by creating an economic disadvantage for those competitors through its wireless service plans."

State Senator Weiner summarized the modified legislation:

"It is, with the amendments, a fake net neutrality bill..."

A key supporter of the modified, weak bill was Assemblyman Miguel Santiago, a Democrat from Los Angeles. Motherboard reported:

"Spearheading the rushed dismantling of the promising law was Committee Chair Miguel Santiago, a routine recipient of AT&T campaign contributions. Santiago’s office failed to respond to numerous requests for comment from Motherboard and numerous other media outlets... Weiner told the San Francisco Chronicle that the AT&T fueled “evisceration” of his proposal was “decidedly unfair.” But that’s historically how AT&T, a company with an almost comical amount of control over state legislatures, tends to operate. The company has so much power in many states, it’s frequently allowed to quite literally write terrible state telecom law..."

Supporters of this weakened bill either forgot or ignored the results from a December 2017 study of 1,077 voters. Most consumers want net neutrality protections:

Do you favor or oppose the proposal to give ISPs the freedom to: a) provide websites the option to give their visitors the ability to download material at a higher speed, for a fee, while providing a slower speed for other websites; b) block access to certain websites; and c) charge their customers an extra fee to gain access to certain websites?
Group	Favor	Opposed	Refused/Don't Know
National	15.5%	82.9%	1.6%
Republicans	21.0%	75.4%	3.6%
Democrats	11.0%	88.5%	0.5%
Independents	14.0%	85.9%	0.1%

Why would politicians pursue weak net neutrality bills with few protections, while constituents want those protections? They are doing the bidding of the corporate internet service providers (ISPs) at the expense of their constituents. Profits before people. These politicians promote the freedom for ISPs to do as they please while restricting consumers' freedoms to use the bandwidth they've purchased however they please.

Broadcasting and Cable reported:

"These California democrats will go down in history as among the worst corporate shills that have ever held elected office," said Evan Greer of net neutrality activist group Fight for the Future. "Californians should rise up and demand that at their Assembly members represent them. The actions of this committee are an attack not just on net neutrality, but on our democracy.” According to Greer, the vote passed 8-0, with Democrats joining Republicans to amend the bill."

According to C/Net, more than 24 states are considering net neutrality legislation to protect their residents:

"... New York, Connecticut, and Maryland, are also considering legislation to reinstate net neutrality rules. Oregon and Washington state have already signed their own net neutrality legislation into law. Governors in several states, including New Jersey and Montana, have signed executive orders requiring ISPs that do business with the state adhere to net neutrality principles."

So, we have AT&T (plus politicians more interested in corporate donors than their constituents, the FCC, President Trump, and probably other telecommunications companies) to thank for this mess. What do you think?

Comments

[Chanson de Roland]

As regrettable as California’s Democrats being shills for AT&T to kill California’s net neutrality bill in all but name is, the real danger for California and all other states’ net neutrality legislation isn’t the effect of powerful ISPs’ lobbying, as bad as that is, but is the preemption doctrine. The preemption doctrine is a well settled doctrine of constitutional law, which holds that Congress, when duly legislating within the scope of its constitutional authority, legislates to completely regulate a topic that is subject to its authority or when state law materially interferes with the effect of such Congressional legislation, the state law is preempted to the extent of its interference.

Congress in regulating interstate communications is clearly acting within the ambit of and pursuant to its Interstate Commerce Authority. Pursuant to that authority, Congress clearly established the FCC as the sole authority to regulate interstate communications, which the Internet and all telecommunications clearly are. Therefore, to the extent that the laws of any state contradict or even interfere with FCC’s regulation on the topic of net neutrality, those laws are interfering with the authority of the superior sovereign, the United States, in the exercise of its constitutional authority to make binding law pursuant to its constitutional grant of authority, and are, therefore, unconstitutional, preempted, and void ab initio.

States’ rights beyond the limits to federal authority, as set forth in the U.S. Constitution, don’t have any more legal merit for liberals than it does for conservatives. Therefore, aside from the US. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, the other U.S. Courts of Appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court will almost certain strike down at the earliest opportunity all the state net neutrality laws, to the extent that they differ in any material way from the FCC’s rules.

[Aydinn]

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