Net Neutrality Saved? - Save the Internet Act announced March 6th
- from Gabriel Howard
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- Stroudsburg Area High School
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- 1203 views
NOTICE: This is a story in development. If things are subject to change, there will be an update on the article.
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It appears that the fight against Net Neutrality is not finished just yet. Remember when everyone was freaking out about that topic last year?
For those of you who need to get caught up to speed, last year in the United States, the Trump Administration and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), under the direction of Ajit Pai, passed a bill that would undo an act established under the Obama Administration to make the Internet ‘open and free’. What that meant is that your Internet Service Providers (companies like AT&T, Sprint, Verison) would charge you more money to allow your internet to speed up more or slow down to a turtle’s pace.
In 2017, there was mass hysteria and a huge protest from over 86% of the citizens in the U.S., and the Democrats as well as 82% of Republicans. The FCC went ahead with the choice anyways, and after a year and going into 2019, there is a glimmer of hope within the darkness.
On Wednesday, March 6th, Democrats introduced a new bill that could become the undoing of the current stance of the internet by the FCC. This new bill is called the “Save the Internet Act”, and many ISPs and Silicon Valley held celebrations all around.
"The Internet in America today is free and vibrant,” says Tina Pelkey, a spokeswoman for Pai, “and the main thing it needs to be saved from is heavy-handed regulation from the 1930s."
The bill itself is only two pages long, and in it contains the information and plan to undo the unfair plans put in place by the FCC and re-instate the Obama-era bill put in place. Even the former FCC Chairman, Tom Wheeler, said “the dueling legislative efforts now set the stage for a political battle over net neutrality.”
There is a small uphill battle about to be taken place, however. While it is certain that the bill will pass through the House of Representatives, seeing as though that the House won a mostly Democratic chamber in the November 2018 midterm elections, there is still the matter of the Republican-controlled Senate to deal with.
Is everything all for naught? Or is there a ray of sunshine with this bill that could allow us to have Net Neutrality back on the map?
To read the official document, here is the PDF link here.