Net neutrality in the United States

[9] In the early 2000s, legal scholars such as Tim Wu and Lawrence Lessig raised the issue of neutrality in a series of academic papers addressing regulatory frameworks for packet networks.

[10] Wu had found based on behaviors of broadband providers in the early 2000s that there could be potential for commercial interests to interfere with natural evolution of new innovations on the Internet, such as those using higher bandwidth like voice and video applications.

In a speech at the Silicon Flatirons Symposium, Powell encouraged ISPs to offer users these four freedoms:[18] In early 2005, in the Madison River case, the FCC for the first time showed the willingness to enforce its network neutrality principles by opening an investigation about Madison River Communications, a local telephone carrier that was blocking Vonage's voice over IP (VoIP) service in its digital subscriber line (DSL) offering to customers.

"[29] In 2007, Comcast, the largest cable company in the US, was found to be blocking or severely delaying BitTorrent uploads on their network using a technique which involved creating 'reset' packets (TCP RST) that appeared to come from the other party.

Then-FCC chairman Kevin J. Martin said the order was meant to set a precedent, that Internet providers and all communications companies could not prevent customers from using their networks the way they see fit, unless there is a good reason.

[63][64][65][66][67] Public response was heated, pointing out FCC chairman Tom Wheeler's past as a president and CEO of two major ISP-related organizations, and the suspicion of bias towards the profit-motives of ISPs as a result.

Popular websites such as Tumblr, Vimeo, and Reddit also participated in the Internet slowdown on September 10, 2014, which the organization said was the largest sustained (lasting more than a single day) online protest effort in history.

Pai had previously been nominated to fill one of the required Republican seats on the commission by President Obama under the recommendation of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

[122] Pai, who objected to the 2015 Open Internet Order, quickly began to roll back some of the policies that had been implemented by the FCC during the Obama administration, and halted an investigation into the use of zero-rating by U.S. wireless providers.

[128][129] On May 18, 2017, the FCC voted 2–1 to move forward with Pai's Notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) on "Restoring Internet freedom" rules[130] by rolling back net neutrality regulations.

[132] The FCC supported their rules by arguing that the classification of ISPs as Title II carriers had caused them to reduce their capital expenditures in new infrastructure, threatening the future of the nation's telecommunication systems.

[134][135] In her dissent to this NPRM, FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn wrote, "I have yet to see a credible analysis that suggests that broadband provider capital expenditures have declined as a result of our 2015 Open Internet Order.

Using the same logic that the NPRM uses, one could suggest that the FCC's classification of cable modem service as an information service in 2002 resulted in an even more precipitous drop in broadband provider investment.”[136] Ernesto Falcon, Legislative Council for the Electronic Frontier Foundation[137] claimed that no such claims of CapEx reductions have been made in official reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC),[138] He said that major companies can be sued by investors who assert that they lost money because of misleading information in an SEC filing, and no such penalties apply to potentially misleading statements to Congress or the public.

[138] Falcon's claim is supported by an analysis by Turner of Free Press in a report that includes 26 figures and tables, 21 of which were extracted from SEC filings and three of the remaining five came from the U.S. Census Bureau's Annual Capital Expenditures Survey.

[147] In December 2017, the Pew Research Center issued its report in reviewing the comments, affirming that most of them were boilerplate messages, but representative of a mass campaign attempting to sway public policy.

The Pew report did recognize that several of the names were nonsensical, such as variations of "John Smith", or used "The Internet", and in other cases, thousands of messages were received at nearly the same time, potential evidence of a bot spamming in comments.

The FCC denied the requests in December 2018 citing that releasing this information would leave the US vulnerable to a cyberattack, and Pai wrote in an attached statement that at least 500,000 of the comments were tied to Russian addresses, interfering in the process and trying to swing the public opinion in favor of keeping the Obama-era net neutrality rules.

[153] A separate FOIA request was made by The New York Times as well as the website Gizmodo for records pertaining to the API key logs from the ECFS, which were granted after journalists from the works filed suit against the FCC's initial denial.

Separately, Gizmodo found the language of the duplicated comments shares many similarities with statements made by the Center for Individual Freedom (CFIF), which had been outspoken against net neutrality of the page.

[178] In January 2018, fifty United States senators endorsed legislative action under the Congressional Review Act (CRA) to reverse the repeal of Title II net neutrality.

On the same day as it was signed, the US Department of Justice sued the state of California to stop the law, arguing that Congress granted the FCC the sole authority to create rules for broadband internet providers.

[188] With the October 2019 decision in Mozilla v. FCC that overturned the 2017 Order's blanket ban on state net neutrality, the U.S. government and the ISP trade groups restarted their lawsuit in August 2020 and are seeking a preliminary injunction to block enforcement of California's law until the case is concluded.

[246] Comcast blocked ports of VPNs, forcing the state of Washington, for example, to contract with telecommunications providers to ensure that its employees had access to unimpeded broadband for remote work.

[259] Organizations that support net neutrality come from widely varied political backgrounds and include groups such as Consumer Reports,[260] MoveOn.org, Free Press, Consumer Federation of America, AARP, American Library Association, Public Knowledge, the Media Access Project, the Christian Coalition, TechNet,[261][262][263] the American Civil Liberties Union, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Greenpeace, Tumblr, Kickstarter, Vimeo, Wikia, Mozilla Foundation, NEA, and others.

[264][265][266][267][268][269] Prominent supporters of net neutrality include Vinton Cerf, co-inventor of the Internet Protocol; Tim Berners-Lee, creator of the World Wide Web; law professor Tim Wu; Netflix CEO Reed Hastings; Tumblr founder David Karp; Free Press President Craig Aaron; and Last Week Tonight host John Oliver, who presented two full-length Last Week Tonight segments about the issue.

[279] Barbara Stripling, the president of the American Library Association states: "School, public and college libraries rely upon the public availability of open, affordable Internet access for school homework assignments, distance learning classes, e-government services, licensed databases, job-training videos, medical and scientific research, and many other essential services, we must ensure the same quality access to online educational content as to entertainment and other commercial offerings.

Neutrality advocates Tim Wu and Lawrence Lessig have argued that the FCC does have regulatory power over the matter, following from the must-carry precedent set in the Supreme Court case Turner Broadcasting v. Federal Communications Commission.

[289] Some have referenced[290] the advance of Elon Musk's Starlink as something that could undercut the lobbying power of cable companies by offering internet access via satellite as opposed to traditional wired or wireless technologies.

[309] Former hedge fund manager turned journalist Andy Kessler has argued, the threat of eminent domain against the telecommunication providers, instead of new legislation, is the best approach by forcing competition and better services.

[325] In 2011 Aparna Watal, a legal officer at an Internet company named Atomic Labs, has put forward three points for resisting any urge "to react legislatively to the apparent regulatory crisis".