California The Latest State To Propose Its Own Net Neutrality Rules

from the states-rights...or-not... dept

As we've been trying to help people understand, the FCC's repeal of net neutrality goes well beyond just killing net neutrality. The agency's "Restoring Internet Freedom" order not only guts FCC authority over broadband providers, but attempts to shovel any remaining oversight to the FTC. An FTC whose own authority over ISPs is already very limited, and which could be eroded almost completely if AT&T wins an ongoing court battle against the agency (this fact is conveniently forgotten by the small minority of folks still barking support for this historically-unpopular plan).

The goal is to eliminate nearly all meaningful federal oversight of uncompetitive telecom duopolies. But both Verizon and AT&T also successfully lobbied the FCC to include language banning states from trying to protect consumers from monopoly market abuses, whether they take the form of net neutrality violations, misleading pricing, hidden fees, or a rotating crop of privacy violations.

But the incumbent ISP stranglehold over state legislatures is so severe, this tends to be an uphill battle. Case in point: California recently tried to pass a new, EFF-approved privacy law in the wake of the GOP assault on FCC rules, only to have it scuttled by ISP lobbyists, who convinced state lawmakers that the proposal would somehow "increase popups" and "aid extremists." In reality the proposal was relatively modest, mirroring the deceased FCC proposal requiring ISPs disclose what data is being collected and sold (and to whom), while requiring they provide working opt out tools.

California's back again to try the same thing with net neutrality.

Unfortunately right now the proposal by California state Senator Scott Weiner is little more than a placeholder (pdf), but it tries to detail how California will tackle ISPs that violate net neutrality. Since the FCC repeal "pre-empts" states from passing their own net neutrality protections, states like Washington and New York have instead looked toward punishing bad actors like Comcast in other ways. Like restricting access to utility poles, rights of way, or government contracts to companies that repeatedly engage in anti-competitive, anti-consumer behavior. From the proposal:

"Under existing law, the Public Utilities Commission has regulatory authority over public utilities, including telephone corporations. Pursuant to its existing authority, the commission supervises administration of the state's telecommunications universal service programs. The Digital Infrastructure and Video Competition Act of 2006 establishes a procedure for the issuance of state franchises for the provision of video service, defined to include cable service and open-video systems, administered by these commissions. The bill would state the intent of the Legislature to enact legislation to effectuate net neutrality in California utilizing the state's regulatory powers and to prevent Internet service providers from engaging in practices inconsistent with net neutrality...

There's of course several potential pitfalls here. One, the real issues will arise when California begins trying to define what net neutrality is. As we saw on the federal level in 2010 and 2015, lobbyists are immeasurably successful at using the complex technical nature of net neutrality to their advantage, convincing Luddite lawmakers to include so many loopholes as to make the rules useless. ISP lobbyists will likely work overtime to either water down the bill's language to the point of absurdity, misrepresent what the bill does (as they did with privacy), or bombard the state with lawsuits (likely all three).

And that's of course California. There's countless states where companies like AT&T and Comcast quite literally own state legislatures and most telecom regulators (Tennessee comes quickly to mind). States where similar laws will never be passed or enforced, creating huge oversight gaps for companies with thirty-years of documented anti-competitive history.

That's why, again, the best path forward to protecting net neutrality remains in hoping the courts get it right, and reverse the FCC's repeal for being "arbitrary and capricious," ignoring the public welfare, and turning a blind eye to shady comment period fraud. Not that states shouldn't try to protect consumers, but without rooting out state-level telecom influence and corruption first, passing meaningful state-level net neutrality protections -- then seeing consistent enforcement -- remains a long shot.

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Filed Under: california, fcc, net neutrality, states rights