President expects FCC to regulate Internet, uphold neutrality principles.
by Jon Brodkin - Jan 31 2014, 1:15pm PST ars technica
President Barack Obama today spoke about the recent court decision that gutted the nation's network neutrality law, saying that he expects the FCC to take action to preserve the open Internet, which proved crucial in his presidential campaign.
"It's something that I've cared deeply about ever since I ran for office, in part because my own campaign was empowered by a free and open Internet and the ability for citizens all across the country to engage and create and find new ways and new tools to mobilize themselves," Obama said. "A lot of that couldn't have been done if there were a lot of commercial barriers and roadblocks and so I've been a strong supporter of net neutrality."
The Federal Communications Commission passed the current net neutrality rules, via the Open Internet Order, in 2010 during Obama's first term. The rules prevented Internet service providers from blocking Web applications or charging for access to the network. Verizon challenged the rules and got them overturned, but the FCC could rewrite the order to put it on a more solid legal footing.
Obama was asked about the court ruling this afternoon in a Google hangout. You can see the video here:
A Virtual Road Trip with President Obama.
Obama said he expects the FCC to do something, although he said he won't intervene directly. Here's the rest of the president's response:
The new commissioner of the FCC, Tom Wheeler, who I appointed, I know is a strong supporter of net neutrality. We live under a system in which when a court rules we have to respect that ruling initially, but the FCC is looking at all the options at their disposal, potential appeals, potential rulemaking, a variety of tools that they may have in order to continue to vindicate the notion of a free and open Internet, and I think you can feel confident that this administration will continue to support that. There are going to be a lot of technical issues about how best we can get to that. And I know that they're still evaluating the court opinion.
The one good piece of news coming out of this court opinion was that the court did confirm that the FCC can regulate this space. They have authority, and the question now is how do they use that authority, if the old systems and rulings that they had in place were not effective in preserving net neutrality do they have other tools that would stand up to court scrutiny that accomplish the same goals.
You can expect that even though the FCC is independent, once I make the appointment I can't meddle in the decision making there, based on my conversations with Tom Wheeler before he was appointed I'm pretty confident, and they've said already that they're going to be exploring how they can continue to uphold what makes the Internet so special.
Consumer advocates have called upon the FCC to reclassify broadband as a common carrier service so that anti-blocking and anti-discrimination rules can be reinstated. Wheeler hasn't revealed exactly what he'll do, but he said this week "you will see some specifics coming out shortly."
Obama also responded to a question about NSA spying today. He mainly re-hashed previous statements that we've already written about, but if you'd like to see what he said, here is the video:
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