House Republicans have taken dead aim at a host of recently enacted regulations they view as hostile to business and economic recovery. Included in that list are the rules the Federal Communications Commission recently passed to bar Internet service providers from discriminating against certain traffic on their networks.
But in the Senate, a group of Democrats is pushing back, appealing to the leadership to reject an effort to overturn the FCC’s order in the budget bill currently under debate.
Sens. John Kerry, Maria Cantwell, Ron Wyden and Al Franken wrote to the Democrat and Republican leaders in an appeal to leave the FCC’s order standing, a move they say is essential to preserving the free and open Internet.
“Unfortunately, the House has decided that it knows better what is good for the Internet than the people who use, fund, and work on it,” the senators wrote in their letter to Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), the minority leader. “They claim to stand for freedom. But the only freedom they are providing for is the freedom of telephone and cable companies to determine the future of the Internet, where you can go on it, what you can attach to it, and which services will win or lose on it.”
Datamation has the story.