House Passes Anti-Net Neutrality Resolution

Saturday 9 April 2011
by: Nadia Prupis, Truthout

The Republican-controlled House of Re­presen­tatives on Friday, with the sup­port of a han­d­ful of De­moc­rats, pas­sed a joint re­solu­tion to re­pe­al the Feder­al Com­munica­tions Com­mis­sion's (FCC) net neut­ral­ity re­gula­tions that would en­for­ce com­petitive be­havior among In­ter­net com­pan­ies.

De­moc­rats who voted in favor of the re­solu­tion along with their Re­pub­lican col­leagues are Reps. Dan Boren (D-Oklahoma), San­ford Bi­shop (D-Georgia), a con­ser­vative Blue Dog, David Scott (D-Georgia), Kurt Shrad­er (D-Oregon), Be­nnie Thompson (D-Mississippi) and Col­lin Peter­son (D-Minnesota).

H.J. Res. 37, which dis­approves of FCC rules “re­lat­ing to the matt­er of pre­serv­ing the open In­ter­net and broad­band in­dust­ry prac­tices,” pas­sed 240-179. The re­solu­tion will now be sent to the Sen­ate for a vote, where it is un­like­ly to be approved by the De­moc­ratic major­ity.

As Trut­hout pre­vious­ly re­por­ted, the re­solu­tion of dis­approv­al is a rare­ly used pro­cedure that al­lows Con­gress to for­mal­ly re­ject and re­ver­se the ac­tions of a feder­al agen­cy. House Re­pub­licans pre­vious­ly in­troduced a re­solu­tion of dis­approv­al last Novemb­er to over­turn the Dodd-Frank fin­an­ci­al re­form law, but were un­suc­cess­ful.

Rep. Greg Wald­en (R-Oregon), chair­man of the House Com­munica­tions Sub­com­mittee, said the anti-net neut­ral­ity re­solu­tion amoun­ted to Con­gress re­cog­niz­ing that it had not “aut­horized the FCC to re­gulate the In­ter­net.”

“If not chal­lenged, the FCC's power grab would allow it to re­gulate any in­terstate com­munica­tions ser­vice on bare­ly more than a whim and with­out any ad­dition­al input from Con­gress,” Wald­en said.

Parul P. Desai, poli­cy co­un­sel for the Con­sum­ers Union, said FCC re­gula­tions are neces­sa­ry to pre­vent In­ter­net pro­vid­ers from li­mit­ing or block­ing ac­cess to legal web­sites.

“When con­sum­ers spend money on In­ter­net ser­vice, they ex­pect to be able to surf the web op­en­ly,” Desai said. “In­ter­net pro­vid­ers should not limit your choices to their pre­fer­red sites. That's why we need rules, like the FCC’s framework, to main­tain an open In­ter­net.”

Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-California), whose dis­trict in­cludes Facebook and Goog­le as con­stituent com­pan­ies, said that if the re­solu­tion “were about in­nova­tion, jobs, com­peti­tion, or con­sum­ers, the major­ity would­n't rea­l­ly be of­fer­ing it, be­cause it dis­ables a free and open In­ter­net,” not­ing that “more than 150 or­ganiza­tions... have lined up against it.”

Dur­ing a House com­mit­tee hear­ing on April 4, Eshoo said that “with­out the FCC's basic 'rules of the road,' noth­ing will pre­vent large cor­pora­tions from carv­ing the In­ter­net into fast and slow lanes, de­cid­ing which sour­ces of news, in­for­ma­tion, and en­ter­tain­ment con­sum­ers and busi­ness can ac­cess.”

One of the major back­ers of the anit-net neut­ral­ity re­solu­tion is Freedom Works, a right-wing non­profit or­ganiza­tion, that has re­ceived fund­ing from Verizon and AT&T, who stand to be­nefit if the law is over­tur­ned, and the Koch Broth­ers fami­ly foun­tain.

The group's pre­sident, Matt Kibbe, said net neut­ral­ity, “is li­ke­ly to crip­ple com­peti­tion, re­strict in­nova­tion, re­duce em­ploy­ment and raise costs for all con­sum­ers... The FCC's net neut­ral­ity re­gula­tions would re­strict the freedom of all In­ter­net users while furth­er harm­ing our fragile economy.” .

While a major­ity of De­moc­rats and Re­pub­licans voted on the re­solu­tion along party lines, sever­al re­presen­tatives did agree that the tim­ing of the vote sym­bolized the poten­tial­ly de­struc­tive sparr­ing in Con­gress.

“We would not be here today if the De­moc­rats in the last Con­gress had bot­hered to take up a bud­get and pass it or even vote on it,” Wald­en said; Rep. Nor­man Dicks (D-Washington) asked his col­leagues, “Why are we con­sider­ing H.J. Res. 37 when we are on the verge of shutt­ing down the House of Re­presen­tatives?”

Rep. Henry Wax­man (D-California), rank­ing mem­b­er of the En­er­gy & Com­mer­ce Com­mit­tee, said that H.J. Res. 37 “would give big phone and cable com­pan­ies con­trol over what web­sites Americans can visit, what applica­tions they can run, and what de­vices they can use. The In­ter­net may be the greatest en­gine in our economy today... [be­cause] it is open.”

One ques­tion that re­mains un­answered is wheth­er the FCC ac­tual­ly has the aut­hor­ity to re­gulate the In­ter­net. A feder­al ap­pe­als court in April 2010 ruled that the com­miss­ion does not have that power, stat­ing that Con­gress must have ex­plicit­ly aut­hor­ize it to do so; rath­er, the FCC has “an­cil­la­ry juris­dic­tion” gran­ted by sec­tions of the Telecom­munica­tions Act of 1996.

http://www.truthout.org/house-passes-anti-net-neutrality-resolution/1302332400