The final call is here. The results of the elections conducted for the killing of net neutrality have been announced on 14th Dec 2017. As expected the results are considered to be undemocratic and entirely in the favor of Ajit Pai.
The US communications regulator has voted to weaken the rules that strengthen net neutrality. In other words, net neutrality has been killed!
The Federal Communication Commission (FCC) has voted three to two to change the rules of net neutrality made in Obama’s era, 2015. And now Internet Service Providers (ISP) has the authority to control all internet activities, allowing them full control over websites, servers, and speeds depending on the amount of money being paid by a particular website. Now they can “OFFICIALLY” speed up or slow down the internet providing their justifications based on a set of “NEW RULES”.
Also, Thursday’s proceedings in Washington were halted for about 15 minutes after a security alert forced an evacuation of the FCC’S chamber and happened at the time when Ajit Pai was speaking.
Present situation: As soon as the results were announced, many public protests and social unrests were observed in the streets of different cities of America, indicating that people are well aware of the present situation that their right to free will has been taken away from them.
Also, the decision is already facing many legal challenges all across the country. The decision has been challenged by numerous jurist and members of the Congress, with New York’s attorney general, Eric Schneiderman, announcing that he will litigate against the FCC’S decision. He also said, “As many as two million identities, some of dead New Yorkers, were used to post comments to the FCC website”.
Upon hearing, the FCC commissioner Mr. Michael O’Rielly claimed, “Staff has been able to discard abusive comments, till now”. He also vocalized net neutrality to be a scary bedtime story for children of telecom geeks.
Social media caught fire with activists tweeting their opposition to the rule change. The pioneers responsible for creating the internet denounced the decision, telling the FCC, “You don’t understand how the internet works.”
Netflix called the FCC vote “misguided” saying the net neutrality repeal would “gut” important protections for startups. “Without Net Neutrality, we would never have been able to grow into the business we have today. There’s a whole future of startups that deserve that chance,” the company tweeted.
Also, Apple is amongst the ones to protect net neutrality and is trying to guarantee it continues.
The EFF in opposition: The Electronic Frontiers Foundation (EFF), come up once again as a foundation protecting our civil liberties in a digital world.
The EFF said,
The FCC’s decision to abandon its traditional role in protecting an open and free Internet will go down as one of the biggest mistakes in Internet policy history.
We will fight in the courts, in the states, and in Congress to restore #NetNeutrality.
— EFF (@EFF) December 14, 2017
According to the above tweet, the EFF stands against this decision of the murder of net neutrality claiming that this will be a huge downfall in the history of the internet and is one of the biggest mistakes made by the FCC, i.e. signing up the freedom of the internet to the ISP.
EFF is ensuring to challenge the decision in courts and get it reversed back to the original form as in 2015.
Moreover, that’s not the only foundation against this decision. Dozens of members of Congress voiced their opposition vowing to fight the new rule. Republican Rep. Mike Coffman (Colo.), an outlier in his party, announced he would introduce legislation to reverse Thursday’s decision.
Deduction: In short, this decision is being criticized as an undemocratic one taking away people’s right to free expression and efforts are being made to approve its reversal from all across America.
That’s the current news affairs till now, further reports will be filed up soon and shall be presented to the general public.
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About the Author
Samin fatima is a cyber security worker. She writes to engage indiviuals and spread awareness regarding cyber bullying and is working for the better development of IT infrastructure and engage the attention of people regarding cyber crime and protect users from cyber bullying. Also a social worker who works to educate people through her own blogs and sorts out different issues aswell.
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