Netflix Slams FCC’s ‘Misguided’ Repeal of Net Neutrality Regulations
Netflix is among the crowd blasting the Federal Communications Commission’s decision Thursday to roll back the Obama-era network neutrality regulations, which were aimed at ensuring content companies aren’t discriminated against by broadband providers.
In a statement, Netflix said: “We’re disappointed in the FCC’s decision to gut the net neutrality protections that ushered in an unprecedented era of innovation, creativity and civic engagement. Today’s decision is the beginning of a longer legal battle. Netflix will stand with innovators, large and small, to oppose this misguided FCC order.”
The FCC’s commissioners, as expected, voted 3-2 along party lines to roll back the agency’s net neutrality regulations enacted under the Obama administration. The effort to repeal the rules was led by FCC chairman Ajit Pai, whom Donald Trump appointed to head the agency.
With the move, internet service providers will no longer be officially barred from blocking content or degrading access to it. They also will have the latitude to sell guaranteed access to content providers. The fear among net-neutrality supporters — including companies like Netflix, Google, Facebook, Twitter and Amazon — is that ISPs could now begin charging new fees to both consumers and content companies to access video and other services.
“The @FCC’s vote to gut #NetNeutrality rules is a body blow to innovation and free expression,” Twitter’s public policy team tweeted after the note.
Telecom and cable companies cheered the FCC’s action to revert to “light touch” regulation of the internet.
“Today’s action does not mark the ‘end of the Internet as we know it,” Comcast’s David Cohen, senior EVP and chief diversity officer, said in a statement. “Rather, it heralds in a new era of light regulation that will benefit consumers.”
Many other commenters chimed in on the FCC vote, including former FCC chairman Tom Wheeler, who had championed the network neutrality regulations that were adopted in 2015.
“The Trump FCC executed the network companies’ playbook to perfection,” Wheeler, now a visiting fellow with the Brookings Institution, wrote in a blog post on the think tank’s site. “With this vote, the FCC walked away from over a decade of bipartisan efforts to oversee the fairness and openness of companies such as Comcast, AT&T, Charter, and Verizon.”
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