Pipeline plan clears last major regulatory hurdle after vote in Nebraska, but legal challenges and protest likely to follow

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."

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...

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.

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.

Earlier this week, the Federal Communications Commission released its final plan to kill off the net neutrality policies put in place by Barack Obama. It did this just days before a major national holiday in the United States, and is giving the public just three weeks to react before the rollback will be voted on. But that timing hasn’t stifled the early response.

One of the Federal Communications Commission’s top five officials has urged Americans to “make a ruckus” in response to the agency’s plan to vote next month on a policy to gut net neutrality. In an op-ed published Wednesday in the Los Angeles Times, FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel issued an urgent plea for the public to call or write to the FCC before the Dec. 14 vote.

A suspected arson attack at a Texas Walmart was caught on camera Wednesday. Investigators said someone set two fires inside the store. Jackie Sinclair said she was doing some last-minute Thanksgiving shopping when a Walmart employee walked by frantically. Sinclair said she saw the massive flames and pulled out her cellphone to record. "I was like hang on let me show the kids," Sinclair said. "I'm one of those moms - I show my kids everything."

Net neutrality is the First Amendment of the Internet. It guarantees that speech is equal on the network of networks—whether the words come from Walmart, the corporate behemoth that identifies as the largest retailer in the world, or Walmart Watch, the movement that “seeks to hold Walmart fully accountable for its impact on communities, America’s workforce, the retail sector, the environment and the economy.”

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is criticizing the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) after he said it was flooded with fake public comments on net neutrality and did nothing about it. Schneiderman said an investigation shows hundreds of thousands of fake comments that were against net neutrality were sent to the FCC. Another data scientist said the number could actually be more than a million.

A letter signed by 200 companies argues that scrapping the rules will hurt the US economy. More than 200 companies, including AirBnb, Reddit and Twitter, are urging the Federal Communications Commission to reconsider its plan to repeal its net neutrality regulations. In a letter addressed to FCC Chairman Ajit Pai on Monday, the companies asked the agency to reverse course and scrap plans to roll back most of the Obama-era regulations that prevent broadband providers from messing with your internet access.

We wrote earlier this week about how Comcast has changed its promises to uphold net neutrality by pulling back from previous statements that it won't charge websites or other online applications for fast lanes. Comcast spokesperson Sena Fitzmaurice has been claiming that we got the story wrong. But a further examination of how Comcast's net neutrality promises have changed over time reveals another interesting tidbit—Comcast deleted a "no paid prioritization" pledge from its net neutrality webpage on the very same day that the Federal Communications Commission announced its initial plan to repeal net neutrality rules.

A group of senators has sent a letter to the FCC asking the commission to delay its December 14th vote on proposed net neutrality protection rollbacks, The Hill reports. Led by Senator Maggie Hassan, 28 senators signed the letter, which pointed to evidence that the proposal's public comments were rife with fraudulent posts.

When FCC boss Ajit Pai first proposed killing popular net neutrality protections (pdf), he insisted he would proceed "in a far more transparent way than the FCC did" when it first crafted the rules in 2015. That promise has proven to be a historically-hollow one.

Despite increasing concerns over the integrity of the public comment process, the agency will vote as scheduled.

Protestors across the nation rallied in support for network neutrality on Thursday, a week before the Federal Communications Commission is scheduled to take a historic vote rolling back network neutrality regulations. Protestors say those regulations, which were enacted by the Obama FCC in 2015, are crucial for protecting an open Internet.

By now the FCC has made it clear it has absolutely no intention of actually listening to the public or to experts when it comes to its plan to repeal popular net neutrality rules later this week. It doesn't really matter to the FCC's myopic majority that the vast majority of the record 22 million public comments on its plan think it's a stupid idea. It apparently doesn't matter than over 800 startups have warned the FCC that its attack on the rules undermines innovation, competition, and the health of the internet.

Children, the elderly, and dead people are among the most active in submitting input to the FCC about its net neutrality policy. That’s the conclusion you would get from reading the organization’s database of comments that’s it’s required by law to collect and consider before it changes major regulations like those protecting net neutrality. New York’s attorney general, Eric T. Schneiderman, reports today that his six-month investigation has found up to 2 million fake comments submitted on behalf of citizens around the country.

Despite overwhelming opposition from Congress, technical experts, advocacy organizations and, of course, the American people, the FCC has voted to eliminate..

After the Republican-majority FCC voted Thursday morning to repeal the net neutrality rules adopted in 2015, Democrats in Congress mobilized quickly to introduce legislation that could, with enough support, reverse the outcome. The Congressional Review Act (CRA) empowers Congress to use a “resolution of disapproval” to overturn rules passed by federal agencies, and to pass it only requires a simple majority in both the House and Senate. In other words, it may still be possible to prevent the rules enforcing net neutrality from being dismantled—without enduring a yearlong legal battle in US Court of Appeals.