Politics

Rep. Blackburn Introduces Bill To Codify ‘Net Neutrality’

REUTERS/Mike Segar

Daily Caller News Foundation logo
Eric Lieberman Managing Editor
Font Size:

Republican Rep. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee introduced legislation Tuesday that aims to ultimately end the heated debate around so-called “net neutrality” regulations.

Known as the Open Internet Preservation Act, the prospective legislation would codify particular rules imposed by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in 2015 that prohibit the throttling and blocking of certain internet traffic. It would also mandate that internet service providers (ISPs) maintain transparency rules reinforced by the FCC earlier this month when the agency voted 3-2 to undo many of the rules put in place in 2015.

Perhaps most notably, the pending bill would forbid the FCC from claiming broad powers over the internet through a Title II utility classification — a reform that many proponents of net neutrality advocate for in order to enforce the two aforementioned requirements.

The current FCC — which is comprised of three Republican and two Democratic commissioners — recently rolled back rules aiming to strictly administer net neutrality ideals, effectively reverting the policing responsibility back to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), as well as the Department of Justice (DOJ).

“Blackburn’s bill makes one huge concession out of the gate: keeping net neutrality enforcement at the FCC. We’ve long said that the FCC shouldn’t be in the Internet regulation business,” Berin Szóka, president of TechFreedom, said in a statement. “There’s no reason the FTC couldn’t be the agency tasked with enforcing bright-line net neutrality rules. We hope that’s where this issue ultimately winds up, but focusing on the FCC to start will help to keep legislation from turning into a fight over imposing ‘neutrality’ regulations on other Internet services, as leading Democrats and Republicans have proposed.”

The bill does not address the issue of paid prioritization, the concept in which broadband providers could conceivably let content owners (think Netflix and Hulu) cut to the front of the line at congested nodes of internet traffic for an added fee. Such an absence is good, according to Szóka’s analysis, because such an issue, for the most part, would and should be left to the FTC and DOJ and “Congress needs to be very careful in legislating any rule on paid prioritization.”

“First, even under Title II, the D.C. Circuit said the FCC couldn’t stop an ISP from ‘filtering of content into fast (and slow) lanes based on the ISP’s commercial interests,’ provided it was upfront about doing so,” Szóka continued. “Any legislative compromise will turn on this thorny issue, but it’s not surprising that Blackburn wanted to start with a clean, simple bill. A flat ban has always been unwise: ‘Prioritization’ is essentially what content delivery networks do, and without them, the Internet could never handle the video services we all enjoy.”

He says if Congress does find it absolutely necessary to have a more specific rule on paid prioritization “it should consider the compromise negotiated by Google and Verizon in 2010,” which “set a presumption against prioritization” but allows “that presumption to be rebutted if the practice can be shown not to cause ‘meaningful harm to competition or to users.'”

Szóka is sure to add that “prioritization” is often necessary because it “is also what will make 5G services so revolutionary and so beneficial.” (RELATED: The Race To 5G Technology: How America Could Lose Out On The Next Biggest Thing)

Roslyn Layton, a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute who also served on the 2016-2017 FCC Presidential Transition Team, said, the inherent nature of the internet and its complex system requires prioritization — a point in which Szóka alluded to.

Layton explains that equality in services don’t comport with how technology or 5G, the next generation of wireless technology, works, since certain products and utilities require or warrant faster speeds.

“The whole notion about neutral networks and all data being the same is the total opposite of 5G,” said Layton. “5G is about all data being treated with the particular [respective] technological requirements.”

Layton continued:

If you have a thousand devices in your house, they are not going to all need the same treatment, they’ll need different treatment depending upon what the service is. Maybe [for] health sensors on your body you want to have a certain kind of treatment, and then appliances you don’t. The whole notion of the pricing and engineering for the Internet of Things, it’s not one-price-fits-all, or one-size-fits-all, it’s a highly diversified strategy.

People across the ideological spectrum have argued before that legislation is needed to clarify the jurisdictional authority of the federal agencies, and to firmly establish the rules surrounding internet governance.

“The new [FCC] approach is better then the 2015 order, but we still need Congress to clarify US policy toward the internet and the limits of the FCC’s power,” Richard Bennett, one of the original creators of the WiFi system and cofounder of High Tech Forum, told The Daily Caller News Foundation.

Blackburn’s bill may just be a way to show Democrats and advocates of strong regulations over the internet — many of whom have engaged in highly clamorous, and even highly aggressive behavior — that there are apparently legitimate means of ensuring ISPs don’t commit unfair practices without excessively expanding the government’s power.

She arguably did the same by introducing the Browser Act earlier in the year which ostensibly aimed to mandate that people must explicitly give permission to ISPs and websites wanting to use their browsing history and data for business purposes. (RELATED: Google, Facebook Are Super Upset They May No Longer Be Able To Sell Your Internet Data Without Permission)

Blackburn was one of the 265 members of Congress who voted to reverse a privacy rule implemented by the FCC under the Obama administration. Like the Browser Act, the rule was going to require ISPs to get customers’ consent before sharing their browsing history with other companies. But unlike the Browser Act, the Obama-era FCC rule didn’t include companies like Facebook and Google (also known as edge providers).

In other words, Blackburn seemed intent on leveling the playing field much like the recently introduced Open Internet Preservation Act, which also tries to ensure the rules apply to all industries including companies like Netflix and Google — which some argue were unduly favored by the 2015 net neutrality rules.

Blackburn’s office did not respond to TheDCNF’s request for further details by time of publication.

WATCH:

Follow Eric on Twitter

Send tips to eric@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

The Daily Caller News Foundation is working hard to balance out the biased American media. For as little as $3, you can help us. Freedom of speech isn’t free. Make a one-time donation to support the quality, independent journalism of TheDCNF. We’re not dependent on commercial or political support and we do not accept any government funding.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

PREMIUM ARTICLE: Subscribe To Keep Reading

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign Up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
BENEFITS READERS PASS PATRIOTS FOUNDERS
Daily and Breaking Newsletters
Daily Caller Shows
Ad Free Experience
Exclusive Articles
Custom Newsletters
Editor Daily Rundown
Behind The Scenes Coverage
Award Winning Documentaries
Patriot War Room
Patriot Live Chat
Exclusive Events
Gold Membership Card
Tucker Mug

What does Founders Club include?

Tucker Mug and Membership Card
Founders

Readers,

Instead of sucking up to the political and corporate powers that dominate America, The Daily Caller is fighting for you — our readers. We humbly ask you to consider joining us in this fight.

Now that millions of readers are rejecting the increasingly biased and even corrupt corporate media and joining us daily, there are powerful forces lined up to stop us: the old guard of the news media hopes to marginalize us; the big corporate ad agencies want to deprive us of revenue and put us out of business; senators threaten to have our reporters arrested for asking simple questions; the big tech platforms want to limit our ability to communicate with you; and the political party establishments feel threatened by our independence.

We don't complain -- we can't stand complainers -- but we do call it how we see it. We have a fight on our hands, and it's intense. We need your help to smash through the big tech, big media and big government blockade.

We're the insurgent outsiders for a reason: our deep-dive investigations hold the powerful to account. Our original videos undermine their narratives on a daily basis. Even our insistence on having fun infuriates them -- because we won’t bend the knee to political correctness.

One reason we stand apart is because we are not afraid to say we love America. We love her with every fiber of our being, and we think she's worth saving from today’s craziness.

Help us save her.

A second reason we stand out is the sheer number of honest responsible reporters we have helped train. We have trained so many solid reporters that they now hold prominent positions at publications across the political spectrum. Hear a rare reasonable voice at a place like CNN? There’s a good chance they were trained at Daily Caller. Same goes for the numerous Daily Caller alumni dominating the news coverage at outlets such as Fox News, Newsmax, Daily Wire and many others.

Simply put, America needs solid reporters fighting to tell the truth or we will never have honest elections or a fair system. We are working tirelessly to make that happen and we are making a difference.

Since 2010, The Daily Caller has grown immensely. We're in the halls of Congress. We're in the Oval Office. And we're in up to 20 million homes every single month. That's 20 million Americans like you who are impossible to ignore.

We can overcome the forces lined up against all of us. This is an important mission but we can’t do it unless you — the everyday Americans forgotten by the establishment — have our back.

Please consider becoming a Daily Caller Patriot today, and help us keep doing work that holds politicians, corporations and other leaders accountable. Help us thumb our noses at political correctness. Help us train a new generation of news reporters who will actually tell the truth. And help us remind Americans everywhere that there are millions of us who remain clear-eyed about our country's greatness.

In return for membership, Daily Caller Patriots will be able to read The Daily Caller without any of the ads that we have long used to support our mission. We know the ads drive you crazy. They drive us crazy too. But we need revenue to keep the fight going. If you join us, we will cut out the ads for you and put every Lincoln-headed cent we earn into amplifying our voice, training even more solid reporters, and giving you the ad-free experience and lightning fast website you deserve.

Patriots will also be eligible for Patriots Only content, newsletters, chats and live events with our reporters and editors. It's simple: welcome us into your lives, and we'll welcome you into ours.

We can save America together.

Become a Daily Caller Patriot today.

Signature

Neil Patel