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Net neutrality protests were held last Thursday, December 7, in front of Verizon stores in Kansas City, Missouri, and Olathe, Kansas. These were two of reportedly over 700 protests in all 50 states.
Over 15 people gathered in front of the Verizon store at 3385 Main St. in Kansas City, Missouri displaying signs saying things like, “Save the Internet”, “Stop the FCC”, and “No slow lanes”. I’m Spencer Graves reporting for KKFI. I went inside that Verizon store and asked for their thoughts. They said they were were a franchise. They knew the protesters were there but otherwise had no comments. A similar protest was held in front of a Verizon store at 15239 W. 117th St. in Olathe.
Net neutrality started entering the national consciousness in 2007 as documentation began to appear of how Internet access providers like Comcast, Verizon, AT&T and Time Warner Cable were blocking, throttling, altering — including stripping encryption — and redirecting people’s requests for information from the Internet. This generated a wave of activism that still seems to be increasing. It generated 3.7 million comments to the US Federal Communications Commission in late 2014 that convinced the Obama administration to classify the Internet access providers as “telecommunications services” in early 2015 under Title II of the Telecommunications Act of 1934.
However, in late 2014, then-candidate Donald Trump tweeted, “Obama’s attack on the internet is another top down power grab. Net neutrality is the Fairness Doctrine. Will target conservative media.”
In late January of this year, President Trump named Ajit Pai to head the FCC. Pai quickly began to roll back some of the pro-consumer policies that had been implemented by Obama’s FCC. On May 18, they adopted a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on “Restoring Internet Freedom”. That’s the freedom of Internet access providers like Comcast, Verizon, AT&T and Spectrum, to block, throttle, alter and redirect your requests for Information from the Internet. Almost 22 million comments on that issue were filed with the FCC by its August 30 deadline. In late November, the FCC announced they would vote on “Restoring Internet Freedom” at their next meeting, December 14, this coming Thursday.
You can contact your representatives in the US Congress via house.gov and senate.gov. And you can connect with net neutrality supporters via “BattleForTheNet.com”.
Copyright 2017 Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike License (CC BY SA) 4.0 International. Spencer Graves, EndowmentForJournalism.org
