The US Federal Communications Commission voted Thursday (three Democrats approving, two Republicans dissenting) to regulate the Internet as a public utility and to adopt a policy of net neutrality for broadband.
The new rules… are intended to ensure that no content is blocked and that the Internet is not divided into pay-to-play fast lanes for Internet and media companies that can afford it and slow lanes for everyone else. Those prohibitions are hallmarks of the net neutrality concept.
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The F.C.C.’s yearlong path to issuing rules to ensure an open Internet precipitated an extraordinary level of political involvement, from grass-roots populism to the White House, for a regulatory ruling. The F.C.C. received four million comments, about a quarter of them generated through a campaign organized by groups including Fight for the Future, an advocacy nonprofit.
Credit also goes to expat Brit John Oliver, who made a brilliant (and brilliantly funny) case for net neutrality on his HBO TV show, attracting more than eight million views on YouTube. (Tom Wheeler, the FCC chair about whom Oliver expressed skepticism, voted with the majority.)
