The head of the Federal Communications Commission is set to unveil plans next week for a final vote to reverse a landmark 2015 net neutrality order barring the blocking or slowing of web content, two people briefed on the plans said. In May, the FCC voted 2-1 to advance Republican FCC Chairman Ajit Pai’s plan to withdraw the former Obama administration’s order reclassifying internet service providers as if they were utilities.

Federal regulators rolled back decades-old rules on Thursday, making it far easier for media outlets to be bought and sold — potentially leading to more newspapers, radio stations and television broadcasters being owned by a handful of companies. The regulations, eliminated in a 3-to-2 vote by the Federal Communications Commission, were first put in place in the 1970s to ensure that a diversity of voices and opinions could be...

The timeless art of the news dump.

When you go online you have certain expectations. You expect to be connected to whatever website you want. You expect that your cable or phone company isn’t messing with the data and is connecting you to all websites, applications and content you choose. You expect to be in control of your internet experience. When you use the internet you expect Net Neutrality.

The FCC is once again under fire, this time for gutting rules protecting users from losing access to their fixed-line broadband connections as companies like AT&T and Verizon shift their focus to wireless. As we've long noted, Verizon and AT&T have refused to upgrade millions of DSL customers they're no longer interested in. So for years they've been convincing states to gut regulations governing these highly-taxpayer subsidized lines, arguing that wireless connectivity will be "good enough" for many of these users.

Ten years from now, people could look at their local news reporting and wonder how it ever went so wrong. You’ve heard of fake news? You ain’t seen nothing yet... What would happen if the politician you love to hate were indicted, but your local news didn’t report it? No newspaper stories, no TV news, no radio news on the hour, nothing. Couldn’t happen? Think again.

The Trump administration's Federal Communications Commission is expected to announce its plans to begin dismantling of the Obama-era net neutrality rules this week, with an official rollback anticipated following a mid-December meeting, The Wall Street Journal reports. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai vowed last winter that he would take "a weed whacker" to the regulations. Pai argues that the rules — which prevent internet service providers like Comcast and AT&T from tinkering with the speed of certain websites and applications...

It has rewritten media-ownership rules to benefit giant corporations, including the pro-Trump Sinclair Broadcasting.

Enough is enough. It's time for the Internet to fight back. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is expected to vote on its plan to kill net neutrality on December 14. People from across the political spectrum are outraged, so we’re planning to protest at Verizon retail stores across the country on December 7, one week before the vote and at the peak of the busy Holiday shopping season. We'll demand that our members of Congress take action to stop Verizon's puppet FCC from killing net neutrality.

Pai accused of evading questions about FCC helping Sinclair expand media empire. "Because of the number of incident[s] where members of this administration have used personal communications services for government business, we also inquired whether the Chairman or his staff have used personal e-mail or social media messaging applications to communicate with Sinclair. The Chairman has repeatedly refused to answer these inquiries, raising questions about whether he is appropriately following Commission rules."

Net neutrality is under multiple threats in Congress. Whether it’s slashing the FCC's budget, attempting to prohibit the agency from enforcing its Open Internet Order, or stalling net neutrality protections with redundant and unnecessary “studies,” lawmakers are using every trick they can to undermine the FCC’s work to keep the Internet free and open.

The Federal Communications Commission announced on Tuesday that it planned to dismantle landmark regulations that ensure equal access to the internet, clearing the way for companies to charge more and block access to some websites. The proposal, put forward by the F.C.C. chairman, Ajit Pai, is a sweeping repeal of rules put in place by the Obama administration that prohibited high-speed internet service providers from blocking or slowing down the delivery of websites or charging extra fees for the best quality of streaming and other internet services for their subscribers.

The Federal Communications Commission took aim at a signature Obama-era regulation Tuesday, unveiling a plan that would give Internet providers broad powers to determine what websites and online services their customers see and use. Under the agency’s proposal, providers of high-speed Internet services, such as Comcast, Verizon and AT&T, would be able to block websites they do not like and charge Web companies for speedier delivery of their content.

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai released his proposal to kill net neutrality today, and while there’s a lot to be unhappy with, it’s hard not to be taken with the brazenness of his argument. Pai thinks it was a mistake for the FCC to try and stop Comcast from blocking BitTorrent in 2008, thinks all of the regulatory actions the FCC took after that to give itself the authority to prevent blocking were wrong, and wants to go back to the legal framework that allowed...

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says President Donald Trump’s plan to roll back net neutrality protections for the internet “does not make sense” and that he’ll be looking into what he can do to defend net neutrality for the whole internet. “I am very concerned about the attacks on net neutrality,” Trudeau said in Toronto on Wednesday, in response to a question from Motherboard about Trump’s plans. “Net neutrality is something that is essential for small businesses, for consumers, and it is essential to keep the freedom associated with the internet alive.”

Last week, Verizon was caught and subsequently admitted to throttling all video traffic on its network. And today, the company is finally addressing the potential net neutrality issue. In a statement to Broadcasting & Cable, Verizon said that its actions represented “reasonable network management,” which is an exception carved out under the 2015 net neutrality rules. "Video optimization is a non-discriminatory network management practice designed to ensure a high quality customer experience for all customers accessing the shared resources of our wireless network,” a spokesperson said.

On Tuesday, the FCC finally unveiled its plans to kill net neutrality, and on the same day, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman publicly excoriated the agency for refusing to cooperate with his office’s investigation into the hundreds of thousands of likely fake comments that were filed in support of ending the open web.

Tech companies are vowing not to go down without a fight, as the FCC plans to pull the plug on a 'free' internet.

Hundreds of thousands of Americans are having their identities stolen and used to interfere in government decisions about whether internet service providers should be allowed to block apps, slow websites and charge fees for what people do online, says New York’s attorney general. “For six months my office has been investigating who perpetrated a massive scheme to corrupt the FCC’s notice and comment process through the misuse of enormous numbers of real New Yorkers’ and other Americans’ identities,” wrote Eric Schneiderman, New York state’s top lawman, on Tuesday.

The Obama administration's network neutrality rules are in danger, and the activists who helped get those regulations enacted aren't giving up without a fight. They're planning a series of protests nationwide to pressure the Federal Communications Commission to reject Chairman Ajit Pai's plan to roll back network neutrality protections. The protests will be held outside Verizon stores on December 7, a week before an expected December 14 vote on Pai's proposal.