100 Groups Say FCC Net Proposal Is Discriminatory
Policy + Politics

100 Groups Say FCC Net Proposal Is Discriminatory

The organizations join over 125 major tech firms that say the FCC proposal “represents a grave threat to the Internet.”

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Nearly 100 organizations, including the American Civil Liberties Union, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Common Cause, Consumers Union and Greenpeace, released a letter Thursday opposing a Federal Communications Commission proposal that would allow Internet service providers  to create a “fast lane” into subscribers’ homes for content providers able to pay a fee.

The groups said that would amount to de facto discrimination against content providers unable to afford the new tolls. “The open Internet is a forum for free speech, innovation, civic engagement and the exercise of our basic rights. The Internet achieved this status because it was created on a platform governed by the principle of nondiscrimination.”

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The letter, addressed to President Obama and to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, arrived just a day after a small army of firms that rely on the Internet to do business – including the biggest names in online commerce, entertainment, and social media – expressed their opposition as well.

The letter, signed by 125 firms, including Amazon, Facebook, Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Netflix and Twitter, makes the case that the reason the Internet has been the seedbed for new and innovative companies is the non-discriminatory delivery of the traffic that users request.

The letter is in response to Wheeler’s announcement last week that he plans to put the new rule to a commission vote on May 15. Wheeler has insisted that while the proposal would allow ISPs to sell tiered access to content providers, it would not hinder the development of new businesses or impact users’ experience.

His position was pilloried by advocates of “Internet neutrality,” the idea the networks that deliver content over the Internet should not discriminate between kinds of content, but instead should deliver data on a first-come, first-served basis.

Related: Opposition to FCC’s Net Neutrality Rule Grows

“Over the past twenty years, American innovators have created countless Internet-based applications, content offerings, and services that are used around the world,” the letter from the web-based companies reads. “These innovations have created enormous value for Internet users, fueled economic growth, and made our Internet companies global leaders. The innovation we have seen to date happened in a world without discrimination.”

The letter said that the FCC proposal “represents a grave threat” to the Internet.

“Instead of permitting individualized bargaining and discrimination,” it says, “the Commission’s rules should protect users and Internet companies on both fixed and mobile platforms against blocking, discrimination, and paid prioritization, and should make the market for Internet services more transparent. The rules should provide certainty to all market participants and keep the costs of regulation low. Such rules are essential for the future of the Internet.”

The tech firms’ resistance comes at a time when consumers’ ability to access the online content they want, when they want it, is increasingly in question. Earlier this week, the Internet backbone provider Level 3 (also a signer of the FCC letter) publicly complained that several major ISPs in the U.S. are “deliberately harming” the quality of their service to users in order to pressure content providers and backbone firms like Level 3 into paying for the ISPs’ upgrades.

Related: FCC Move Seen as Disaster for Online Start-Ups

To be clear, even if the proposal passes the vote scheduled for next week, it will still have to go through the complex and time-consuming federal rulemaking process, which in some cases can take years to complete.

On Wednesday, FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel called for a delay of an upcoming vote on the proposal, in order to give the public more time to communicate with the agency. Wheeler, however, did not agree to delay the vote.

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