Net Neutrality Repealed

The FCC voted to repeal Net Neutrality rules last Thursday. As discussed in the previous article here on OurWrites.org, this opens the door for internet providers to charge for access or full-speed access to sites of their choosing. It also allows them to shape the internet consumers see in other ways, such as limiting access to competitor’s websites, and it isn’t out of their purview to block access to sites entirely.

It’s unlikely that consumers will see the full ramifications of these changes in rules for some time. The telecom companies are surely smart enough to realize that the backlash from enacting rules that are harmful to consumers right away would lead to an even larger backlash and could see the Net Neutrality rules coming back. So it is likely nothing will change for now.

Some Democrats have hinted at bringing back some of the Net Neutrality rules through some kind of congressional rule, but it is yet to be seen what this would entail.

Some public interest groups have vowed to file lawsuits once the rules become official in January, basing their arguments around some public comments in support of the repeal clearly being fraudulent. There is an entire site devoted to this phenomenon, www.comcastroturf.com, which lets you search for your name to see if a fraudulent comment in support of the repeal was submitted in your name. There are tens of thousands of cases of this happening, with most of the comments using the exact same wording.