FCC chairman lays out plan to kill net neutrality
Well, after months of increasingly less veiled threats against the free and open internet, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai revealed his plan for repealing net neutrality today.
As Variety reports, the Trump-appointed Pai announced he’d seek to officially repeal net neutrality at the December 14 meeting of the FCC, adding another depressing deadline to our future. In a statement, Pai declares, “For almost twenty years, the Internet thrived under the light-touch regulatory approach established by President Clinton and a Republican Congress.” But then, during the Obama administration, Pai claims this organization was forced to “[impose] heavy-handed, utility-style regulations upon the Internet.” He believes the decision was “a mistake. It’s depressed investment in building and expanding broadband networks and deterred innovation.” Yeah, it was a really bad idea to treat something like internet, which virtually everyone uses, as a utility like electricity, which virtually everyone needs.