[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 198 (Tuesday, December 5, 2017)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7840-S7841]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             NET NEUTRALITY

  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, next week, the Federal Communications 
Commission, FCC, will consider a proposed rule, that, if approved, will 
end net neutrality as we know it and will threaten the foundation of a 
free and open internet. Net neutrality is the simple proposition that 
internet service providers should treat all internet traffic the same; 
they should not be able to exploit their power to charge for preferred 
treatment, allowing big corporations to dominate the internet.
  The Chairman of the FCC, Ajit Pai, wants the FCC to undo its 
protections for net neutrality. His proposed ruling is perversely 
styled as ``Restoring Internet Freedom,'' when in fact it would do the 
opposite. It would allow internet service providers to decide which 
websites will be privileged and which will be throttled or even 
blocked. Make no mistake: This will mean that the big firms that can 
afford the ``fast lane'' will be protected, while harming consumers, 
startups, and potentially even freedom of speech online.
  Alarmingly, Chairman Pai has decided to ignore millions of comments 
submitted by individuals across the country, citing concerns that they 
are not ``unique.'' As a Member of Congress accountable to my 
constituents, this is a particularly offensive posture. Unique or not, 
comments and concerns submitted to my office by Vermonters are treated 
with the same weight and value as any other. Until the FCC fully and 
meaningfully considers the more than 21.7 million comments it has 
received about this proposed rule, it should not proceed with this 
vote.
  A recent New York Times article by Farhad Manjoo, entitled, ``The 
Internet Is Dying. Repealing Net Neutrality Hastens That Death,'' lays 
out clearly why the FCC's proposed repeal of net neutrality will bring 
the open internet one giant leap closer to becoming a corporate 
playground. If, as expected, Chairman Pai jams through his proposed 
rule change next week, it will be clear that he has done so to the 
benefit of a few deep-pocketed corporations and to the detriment of 
everyone else who relies on the internet to support commerce, 
communication, and community. I ask unanimous consent that the article 
by Mr. Manjoo be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                [From the New York Times, Nov. 29, 2017]

   The Internet Is Dying, Repealing Net Neutrality Hastens That Death

                           (By Farhad Manjoo)

       Sure, technically, the internet still works. Pull up 
     Facebook on your phone and you will still see your second 
     cousin's baby pictures. But that isn't really the internet. 
     It's not the open, anyone-can-build-it network of the 1990s 
     and early 2000s, the product of technologies created over 
     decades through government funding and academic research, the 
     network that helped undo Microsoft's stranglehold on the tech 
     business and gave us upstarts like Amazon, Google, Facebook 
     and Netflix.
       Nope, that freewheeling internet has been dying a slow 
     death--and a vote next month by the Federal Communications 
     Commission to undo net neutrality would be the final pillow 
     in its face.
       Net neutrality is intended to prevent companies that 
     provide internet service from offering preferential treatment 
     to certain content over their lines. The rules prevent, for 
     instance, AT&T from charging a fee to companies that want to 
     stream high-definition videos to people.
       Because net neutrality shelters start-ups--which can't 
     easily pay for fast-line access--from internet giants that 
     can pay, the rules are just about the last bulwark against 
     the complete corporate takeover of much of online life. When 
     the rules go, the internet will still work, but it will look 
     like and feel like something else altogether--a network in 
     which business development deals, rather than innovation, 
     determine what you experience, a network that feels much more 
     like cable TV than the technological Wild West that gave you 
     Napster and Netflix.
       If this sounds alarmist, consider that the state of digital 
     competition is already pretty sorry. As I've argued 
     regularly, much of the tech industry is at risk of getting 
     swallowed by giants. Today's internet is lousy with 
     gatekeepers, tollbooths and monopolists.
       The five most valuable American companies--Amazon, Apple, 
     Facebook, Google and Microsoft--control much of the online 
     infrastructure, from app stores to operating systems to cloud 
     storage to nearly all of the online ad business. A handful of 
     broadband companies--AT&T, Charter, Comcast and Verizon, many 
     of which are also aiming to become content companies, because 
     why not--provide virtually all the internet connections to 
     American homes and smartphones.
       Together these giants have carved the internet into a 
     historically profitable system of fiefs. They have turned a 
     network whose very promise was endless innovation into one 
     stuck in mud, where every start-up is at the tender mercy of 
     some of the largest corporations on the planet.
       Many companies feel this shift. In a letter to Ajit Pai, 
     the F.C.C. chairman, who drafted the net neutrality repeal 
     order, more than 200 start-ups argued this week that the 
     order ``would put small and medium-sized businesses at a 
     disadvantage and prevent innovative new ones from even 
     getting off the ground.'' This, they said, was ``the opposite 
     of the open market, with a few powerful cable and phone 
     companies picking winners and losers instead of consumers.''
       This was not the way the internet was supposed to go. At 
     its deepest technical level, the Internet was designed to 
     avoid the central points of control that now command it. The 
     technical scheme arose from an even deeper philosophy. The 
     designers of the internet understood that communications 
     networks gain new powers through their end nodes--that is, 
     through the new devices and services that plug into the 
     network, rather than the computers that manage traffic on the 
     network. This is known as the ``end-to-end'' principle of 
     network design, and it basically explains why the internet 
     led to so many more innovations than the centralized 
     networks that came before it, such as the old telephone 
     network.
       The internet's singular power, in its early gold-rush days, 
     was its flexibility. People could imagine a dazzling array of 
     new uses for the network, and as quick as that, they could 
     build and deploy them--a site that sold you books, a site 
     that cataloged the world's information, an application that 
     let you ``borrow'' other people's music, a social network 
     that could connect you to anyone.
       You didn't need permission for any of this stuff; some of 
     these innovations ruined traditional industries, some 
     fundamentally altered society, and many were legally dubious. 
     But the internet meant you could just put it up, and if it 
     worked, the rest of the world would quickly adopt it.
       But if flexibility was the early internet's promise, it was 
     soon imperiled. In 2003, Tim Wu, a law professor now at 
     Columbia Law School (he's also a contributor to The New York 
     Times), saw signs of impending corporate control over the 
     growing internet. Broadband companies that were investing 
     great sums to roll out faster and faster internet service to 
     Americans were becoming wary of running an anything-goes 
     network.
       Some of the new uses of the internet threatened their 
     bottom line. People were using online services as an 
     alternative to paying for cable TV or long-distance phone 
     service. They were connecting devices like Wi-Fi routers, 
     which allowed them to share their connections with multiple 
     devices. At the time, there were persistent reports of 
     broadband companies seeking to block or otherwise frustrate 
     these new services; in a few years, some broadband providers 
     would begin blocking new services outright.
       To Mr. Wu, the broadband monopolies looked like a threat to 
     the end-to-end idea that had powered the internet. In a legal 
     journal, he outlined an idea for regulation to preserve the 
     internet's equal-opportunity design--and hence was born ``net 
     neutrality.''
       Though it has been through a barrage of legal challenges 
     and resurrections, some form of net neutrality has been the 
     governing regime on the internet since 2005. The new F.C.C. 
     order would undo the idea completely; companies would be 
     allowed to block

[[Page S7841]]

     or demand payment for certain traffic as they liked, as long 
     as they disclosed the arrangements.
       At the moment, broadband companies are promising not to act 
     unfairly, and they argue that undoing the rules would give 
     them further incentive to invest in their broadband capacity, 
     ultimately improving the internet.
       Brian Hart. an F.C.C. spokesman, said broadband companies 
     would still be covered by antitrust laws and other rules 
     meant to prevent anticompetitive behavior. He noted that Mr. 
     Pai's proposals would simply return the network to an 
     earlier, pre-network-neutrality regulatory era.
       ``The internet flourished under this framework before, and 
     it will again,'' he said.
       Broadband companies are taking a similar line. When I 
     pointed out to a Comcast spokeswoman that the company's 
     promises were only voluntary--that nothing will prevent 
     Comcast from one day creating special tiers of internet 
     service with bundled content, much like the way it now sells 
     cable TV she suggested I was jumping the gun.
       After all, people have been predicting the end of the 
     internet for years. In 2003, Michael Copps, a Democratically 
     appointed commissioner on the F.C.C. who was alarmed by the 
     central choke points then taking command of the internet, 
     argued that ``we could be witnessing the beginning of the end 
     of the internet as we know it.''
       It's been a recurrent theme among worriers ever since. In 
     2014, the last time it looked like net neutrality would get 
     gutted, Nilay Patel, editor of the Verge, declared the 
     internet dead (he used another word for ``dead''). And he did 
     it again this year, anticipating Mr. Pai's proposal.
       But look, you might say: Despite the hand-wringing, the 
     internet has kept on trucking. Start-ups are still getting 
     funded and going public. Crazy new things still sometimes get 
     invented and defy all expectations; Bitcoin, which is as Wild 
     West as they come, just hit $10,000 on some exchanges.
       Well, O.K. But a vibrant network doesn't die all at once. 
     It takes time and neglect; it grows weaker by the day, but 
     imperceptibly, so that one day we are living in a digital 
     world controlled by giants and we come to regard the whole 
     thing as normal.
       It's not normal. It wasn't always this way. The internet 
     doesn't have to be a corporate playground. That's just the 
     path we've chosen.

                          ____________________