Rick Barry
Twice in the last three years, comedian John Oliver helped shut down the Federal Communications Commission’s website by directing his viewers to weigh in against proposals to curb net neutrality—the notion that all Internet sites should be equally accessible to all users.
In his latest net neutrality video this spring, Oliver directed viewers to visit the website “Go FCC Yourself,” which leads to the FCC’s comment section on Internet freedom. USA Today estimated Oliver's video drove 150,000 comments to the FCC’s site.
Clearly, this is an issue that ordinary people care deeply about. And the fight is heating up.
Activists, companies, and organizations are collaborating to push back against the FCC’s 2 to 1 vote in May to begin rolling back rules preserving net neutrality. Those rules, enacted under the Obama Administration, block Internet providers from slowing down some sites or charging them extra fees to reach their audience.
Advocates for an open internet are organizing an “Internet-Wide Day of Action to Save Net Neutrality” on July 12 to protest the FCC decision.
As Vox pointed out, net neutrality rules prevent Internet providers that produce content—including Comcast and Verizon—from tilting the playing field toward their own sites.
Ajit Pai, Donald Trump’s pick for chair of the FCC, defends the decision by arguing that rolling back net neutrality rules will ensure Internet companies “have strong incentives to bring next-generation networks and services to all Americans."
But open Internet advocates say the FCC’s move would create a two-tiered network dominated by large Internet service providers and their allies. Independent sites like progressive.org could load a lot slower than well-funded commercial sites.
The FCC’s proposal doesn’t take effect immediately. The public has until July 17 to leave comments on the plan. Millions of people have already left feedback. The FCC’s three commissioners—two Republicans and one Democrat—are expected to vote on the final proposal by the fall.
Craig Aaron, president and CEO of Free Press and the Free Press Action Fund—an organization that advocates for an open Internet among other issues and is organizing the July 12 Day of Action—told The Progressive that the issue is coming to a head. If Congress doesn’t involve itself and the FCC votes to end net neutrality, he said it will inevitably result in a court battle, forcing the FCC to defend its actions.
“They have to prove this was necessary,” Aaron said. “Just saying ‘There is a new President’ in and of itself is not a good enough reason.”
The July 12 Day of Action is focused on getting as many people as possible to contact the FCC and Congress in support of net neutrality, Aaron said. But it’s also about the combination of grassroots mobilization and pressure from big business.
What started as an activist-driven campaign, he said, has now drawn in some major Internet companies seeking to “defend the environment that made their existence possible in the first place.”
The demonstration has certainly created some unlikely alliances. Large corporations such as Amazon, Netflix, and Etsy are joining with social justice-oriented groups like the American Civil Liberties Union, Democracy for America, and Greenpeace to participate in the protest.
“The one thing all of them agree on: defending Title II net neutrality,” the Day of Action website states.
Todd O’Boyle, program director at Common Cause, one of the organizations participating in the day of action, told The Progressive that the overall goal is to raise awareness about the importance of maintaining an open Internet. He sees the battle for net neutrality as having stark ramifications for the future of democracy.
“Voters inform themselves online, people debate the issues via social media, and it’s online that people organize for social change,” O’Boyle said. “So the ability to be a fully formed citizen and take part in our twenty-first century democracy means universal affordable access to the Internet.”
The FCC’s effort to undermine net neutrality is, in part, the culmination of intense lobbying by telecommunications companies. During the Obama Administration, Internet providers such as AT&T, Comcast, and Verizon spent millions lobbying against net neutrality rules. It didn’t work.
But the telecommunications companies have a sympathetic ear in Trump and the Republicans, who now control Congress. The Trump Administration has publicly supported revoking net neutrality rules, signaling as much by appointing Pai as chairman of the FCC.
The commission's only Democrat, Mignon Clyburn, voted against slashing net neutrality rules, saying the effort is part of a larger goal by Republicans to undercut the FCC’s mission. “The endgame appears to be no-touch regulation,” said Clyburn, “and a wholesale destruction of the FCC’s public interest authority in the 21st century.”
But activists have beaten back challenges to an open Internet before. In 2014, under then-chairman Tom Wheeler, the FCC proposed rules that would have effectively ended net neutrality. But after a massive public outcry, Wheeler and the commission subsequently adopted strong rules protecting the open Internet.
O’Boyle said this earlier victory demonstrates that, when mobilized, people can come together to protect net neutrality.
“We have shown in the past we have the ability to organize the masses for change irrespective of who is in the White House,” he said. “Our opponents underestimate us at their own peril.”