Net Neutrality: FCC Set to Approve Proposal
Controversial proposal would make govt. agency the cop on the Internet beat.
WASHINGTON, Dec. 20, 2010 -- The FCC is expected to grudgingly accept Chairman Julius Genachowski's plan to make the agency, for the first time, a cop on the high-speed Internet beat.
Commissioners are scheduled to vote Tuesday on Genachowski's "net neutrality" proposal, crafted by FCC staff after months of lobbying by the most powerful media and communications companies in the world, to prevent broadband service providers from censoring how individuals and organizations can surf the Internet's fastest pipes.
Genachowski's proposal has been derided from the left as a giveaway to corporations and from the right as unwarranted government meddling in business. Both of Genachowski's two Democratic colleagues on the five-member FCC said they wish this rule included stronger consumer protections. But they both have decided it's better than nothing and have pledged to support the plan.
In announcing he would vote in favor of the rule, Commissioner Michael Copps, a Democrat, said it "could represent an important milestone in the ongoing struggle to safeguard the awesome opportunity-creating power of the open Internet."
"While I cannot vote wholeheartedly to approve the item, I will not block it by voting against it," Copps said in a statement released today. "I instead plan to concur so that we may move forward."
The two Republicans on the commission have said they plan to vote "no" because they think the rule goes too far.
One of them, Robert McDowell, wrote in today's Wall Street Journal that the "jaw-dropping interventionist chutzpah" of this proposal "may end up marking the beginning of a long winter's night for Internet freedom."
One quirk of the FCC is that the agency does not release to the public exactly what is being brought to a vote. We won't be able to read this new rule until a couple days after the vote.
But Genachowski outlined his principles in a speech earlier this month, declaring the coming rule "an important milestone in our effort to protect Internet freedom and openness."
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