1

Okay. I’ll start with this: For those of you who are for the repeal of Net Neutrality, this discussion isn’t for you, and you have been warned. Do not proceed beyond this point

For those of you who are on the fence, or do not know of the issue, feel free to respond, and I’ll explain it neutrally, then explain my viewpoint. Do not proceed beyond this point until you’re clear on what the issue is, so you can form your own opinion.

For those of you who are for Net Neutrality, and live in Michigan, time is running out. December 14 is the day the vote goes through. Sadly, this vote has gone along party lines on what I feel is a bipartisan issue. Everyone who voted to repeal Net Neutrality was a Republican, though not all Republicans voted to repeal. Justin Amash who is technically savvy (Rep for much of Grand Rapids if not all) is a notable exception, who voted against repeal and is strongly for preserving Net Neutrality.

Here are all the US lawmakers who voted to repeal Title 2 (which is the basic tenet of Net Neutrality; many telecoms are actually saying repeal of Title 2 is Net Neutrality in an attempt to confuse and conflict voters). Most of them have taken donations from telecomms providers or lobbies.

What can you do?

First off, you can call every Republican representative in Michigan. We have two Democratic Senators who are against repeal, so while you can express support (it won’t hurt), they’re probably already on the side of Title 2. However, there are quite a few Republican representatives in the area (notably, Bill Huizenga in Holland, among others) who you could respectfully educate, but also indicate that you work in the area and explain from your technical viewpoint why you believe Title 2 protections are vital, or what would change if they were repealed. You also could indicate (if you feel you do) that your opinion influences voters in their area of constituency. Make sure you include an address and phone number of residency.

Second, you could look at this website:

This site will let you round-robin call from your cell phone, literally every Representative and Senator in Congress in the country who voted to repeal Title 2. If you don’t wish to talk to one, you can skip them as well, but it will do all of the dialing for you so you don’t have to look up a thing. It will even give you things you can say if you don’t feel you have the words you need.

The only way the FCC will back down is if enough Senators and Representatives change their mind and withdraw support. It will only take one Republican leaning FCC commissioner (Brendan Carr, or Michael O’Reilly -I don’t believe Ajit Pai, the chairman will change his mind without influence from Congress) to change the vote, as two of the commissioners are already in favor of Title 2 regulation. You could call the commissioners’ offices as well, tell them your position, and that you are calling your congresspersons to also reflect this.

Since this is getting into TLDR territory, I’ll stop here. Questions, or comments, feel free to post them, or DM me. Thanks for reading.

2 Spice ups
2

First point - Net Neutrality was never the law of the land. This is a repeal of proposed regulations which, had they gone into effect, had a high probability of being struck down by our courts as a violation of Article I of the US Constitution.

Second point - the vote you’re referring to has nothing to do with Net Neutrality. It was a vote on the privacy of your data, specifically your browsing history as collected by the ISPs on their routers and DNS servers.

Do not confuse the two issues as you can have Net Neutrality without privacy and privacy without Net Neutrality. When you confuse these two issues you make it that much harder to correct either.

My opinion is that we need both Net Neutrality and something like the GDPR to protect on-line privacy. The patchwork of privacy laws in the US is simply unmanageable with different Article II (Executive Branch) agencies writing and enforcing conflicting Regulations to execute the Laws passed by Congress.

1 Spice up
3

@Mike400,

I’ll agree that my second point (after I had done some additional research) is more a model for who might vote to repeal Title 2 Net Neutrality regulations, because yes, it was about whether it was okay to sell search engine results. I followed a bad link that didn’t equate this vote. You are correct and based on a lot of additional research I did this weekend, I have become more informed and I agree with your correction on that point. The best we can do is provide conjecture with that article that the people who voted to allow our data to be sold will likely favor repealing Title 2 Net Neutrality clauses.

I agree we need both. I also believe that the FCC shouldn’t repeal this regulation without fairly considering what voters have to say about it, and I feel that they are ignoring a large portion of the country in favor of a set of large corporate monopolies/duopolies. Thank you for your correction; we should always be clear on an issue to others to help them understand and decide based on objective information.

1 Spice up
4

The real underlying issue is “should ISPs be considered ‘common carriers’?”. If yes, the things like privacy and Net Neutrality become the de-facto standards and the FCC has very clear jurisdiction and Law (Congressional) authority to regulate. If not, then all bets are off, including the ability to regulate at all since there is no Congressionally passed/Presidential signed Law to create said regulatory framework. The ISP owners have been fighting tooth and nail to not be labeled common carriers simply because they know that a common carrier label will subject them to all sorts of restrictions to what they can do with the data they collect as well as what sort of contracts they can enter into with content providers.