PD Editorial: Keeping the internet open for everyone

If you went online last Wednesday, you might have noticed that several websites posted alerts warning about threats to net neutrality. They were part of an online “day of action” against a Federal Communications Commission plan to repeal rules that prevent internet service providers from creating fast and slow lanes online.

But unless you clicked on one of those alerts, you might be wondering just how much you should really care about whether the new FCC chairman, Ajit Pai, succeeds in his push for repeal.

At its simplest, net neutrality guarantees that internet service providers treat all online traffic the same. They can’t give special access to business partners or companies that pay them off. They also can’t hobble traffic from a particular site because they don’t like it or because it’s a competitor, either for them or for a parent company.

So if a cable company that provides internet service is, for instance, owned by a mammoth media conglomerate that is threatened by Netflix’s streaming model, the cable company can’t throttle traffic from Netflix’s servers to make watching its online movies and TV shows a worse experience for consumers, and hopefully driving them back to the parent company.

This ensures that the internet is a level playing field and a place where innovation can thrive. Maybe that’s not so important for Netflix anymore, which says it’s now big enough not to be harmed by net neutrality repeal. But it might be for the next startup with a Netflix-sized idea vulnerable to being smothered in its infancy.

Net neutrality is good for consumers, too, guaranteeing that their choices aren’t limited by the whims and profit motives of their service providers, which enjoy de facto monopolies in most areas.

For years, Congress refused to adopt net neutrality rules directly. Instead, under President Barack Obama, the FCC approved them in 2015.

Since then, internet service providers have spent millions of dollars lobbying to have the rules overturned, either by the FCC or by Congress. With a new president and a new FCC chairman, they might get their way.

This was always the risk. A federal rule often only is as strong as the president and his administration want it to be. Laws passed by Congress are harder to repeal.

Sen. Al Franken, D-Minnesota, who visited the Bay Area last week on a book tour, has called net neutrality “the free speech issue of our time.” He also has said that if the FCC ends net neutrality, the issue could end up back in the courts.

Last week’s day of action prompted the public to send 2 million comments to the FCC opposed to ending net neutrality rules. In total, the FCC has received more than 8 million comments on the proposal, more than double the number of comments received in 2015. Recent polls show that Americans overwhelmingly support net neutrality rules, including across partisan lines.

Yet none of that may matter to the FCC. Pai appears determined to gut the rules, and he has the numbers on the commission to get his way.

If that happens, it will be up to voters to elect a congressional majority that doesn’t want internet service providers to dictate what content consumers access at full speed and which companies can flourish online.