The Federal Communications Commission today released the final version of its net neutrality repeal order, three weeks after the December 14 vote to deregulate the broadband industry and eliminate the rules.

You can read the entire order here, though it is similar to the draft that has been available since November.

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Small edits aren't uncommon after FCC votes, and they don't require a second vote. The edits generally respond to concerns raised by commissioners, as we wrote earlier this week.

"In this document, the American public can see for themselves the damage done by this agency to Internet openness," FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel, a Democrat who voted against the repeal, said today. "Going forward, our broadband providers will have the power to block websites, throttle services, and censor online content. This is not right."

The decision "deserves to be revisited, reexamined, and ultimately reversed," she said.


Mignon Clyburn, the commission's other Democrat, weighed in on Twitter:

Text of the @FCC majority’s #NetNeutrality repeal has finally been released. Took almost 6,000 words for me to detail all that is wrong with this action. Read my complete written dissent here: https://t.co/ZlEF3alRvD — Mignon Clyburn (@MClyburnFCC) January 4, 2018

Republican FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr called the release of the document "great news." He said that, because the FCC is relinquishing its authority over broadband to the Federal Trade Commission, "Consumers win back the strong online privacy protections they lost in 2015."

Of course, that's only true because Congress eliminated the even stronger consumer privacy protections that the FCC would have enforced under its Title II regulatory framework, a decision supported by the FCC's Republican majority. There is also an ongoing court case in which AT&T is trying to weaken the FTC's ability to regulate broadband providers, which could leave consumers with even fewer protections.


Now that the order is public, we should soon see lawsuits filed against the FCC by state attorneys general and others who want to reverse the repeal. The repeal itself is not yet final—it takes effect 60 days after publication in the Federal Register, which still hasn't happened.

In 2015, a month passed between the net neutrality order being made public and its appearance in the Federal Register. That means the current net neutrality rules could technically remain on the books until April 2018, although the FCC leadership won't be going out of its way to enforce them in the meantime.