By John D. McKinnon and Douglas MacMillan
WASHINGTON -- Major internet companies are preparing to launch
online protests Wednesday over Republican efforts to roll back
Obama-era net neutrality rules, employing a tactic that has helped
drive policy shifts in past years.
The question is whether it will have the same impact this time.
Silicon Valley and its supporters no longer have the same level of
support in government that they enjoyed under the tech-friendly
Obama administration, and the current Federal Communications
Commission has already made clear its plans to significantly scale
back the net neutrality rules. The GOP-controlled Congress is
unlikely to intervene.
The Republican-led FCC voted in May to begin the process of
rolling back the rules, and it's expected to complete the process
in the fall. The rules, adopted in 2015, generally require
telecommunications companies that provide online access, such as
AT&T Inc. and Comcast Corp., to treat all internet traffic the
same and not slow or block some sites.
Many big internet companies, such as Amazon.com Inc., Facebook
Inc. and Google parent Alphabet Inc., would like to keep the rules
in place, arguing they are important to maintaining healthy
competition on the internet. Big internet companies worry, for
example, that without the strong rules, the providers could use
internet fast lanes to push their own online services.
But the providers contend that the rules represent an
unnecessary overreach by the government that could stifle
investment and innovation and ultimately competition.
Republicans recently have sided with the telecommunications
firms, while Democrats lately have been more sympathetic to the
internet firms.
Wednesday's day of protest is aimed at demonstrating the
grass-roots appeal of the net neutrality rules, and weakening
political support among Republicans for the rollback.
Major organizers, including a coalition of online activists
known as Battle for the Net, as well as the Internet Association, a
trade group, say much of the effort will be aimed at generating
consumer calls and emails to Washington policy makers. That
includes the FCC's three commissioners as well as members of
Congress. Some sites also could run more slowly than normal,
according to organizers, or at least briefly appear to.
Battle for the Net has been offering online firms sample
messages that mimic slowdowns, including one it calls "spinning
wheel of death."
"Don't worry, none of these will actually block, slow or paywall
your site," the group says. "But, they will let your users submit a
comment to the FCC and Congress without having to leave your
platform."
A graphic the group offers for social media users shows a cat
riding a unicorn and wielding a handgun, with the caption, "Keep
the Internet Weird. Defend Net Neutrality."
Vimeo, the video-streaming and sharing site owned by
IAC/InterActiveCorp, plans to join the protest by promoting a
two-minute video about net neutrality on its home page. The video
urges users to call and write letters to the FCC to keep the
internet open.
"We live in a world where the broadband carriers can decide who
gets what at what speed," said Michael Cheah, general counsel at
Vimeo. "There is going to be a very powerful incentive for some of
them to disadvantage us and our offerings."
Political activism is becoming more important for tech startups,
Mr. Cheah added. "We are seeing a large trend toward consolidation
in a number of industries, and one of them is the telecom and
internet content space," he said. "It is important for companies
big and small to voice their concerns with that."
Despite the elaborate preparations, some organizers say the
effort has been more decentralized than past internet protests,
including those that helped galvanize support for the strong 2015
rules. Another protest in 2012 helped scuttle antipiracy
legislation that was favored by much of the entertainment
industry.
By comparison, the current effort is "more organic than what's
been done in the past," said Gigi Sohn, who helped develop the net
neutrality rules under the FCC chairman at the time, Tom Wheeler,
and who now is working to preserve them.
This week's protest also likely faces longer odds of success
than previous ones over net neutrality and antipiracy rules,
because Republicans on the FCC appear determined to go ahead with
the rollback.
"We will not rely on hyperbolic statements about the end of the
internet as we know it, and 140-character argle-bargle [nonsense],
but rather on the data," FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said in May.
For their part, Republican leaders in Congress would love to
draft compromise legislation to scale back, but not eliminate, the
net-neutrality rules. But they have been stymied by partisan
strife.
Some observers say the protests could actually make legislation
more difficult.
"This protest won't live up to the hype, because it won't change
the outcome at all," said Berin Szoka, president of TechFreedom, a
market-oriented advocacy group. "We already know that Republican
commissioners reject the [Obama-era] FCC's sweeping claims of legal
authority...Sadly, the goal here seems to be to make legislation
harder, not easier."
Write to John D. McKinnon at john.mckinnon@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
July 11, 2017 16:20 ET (20:20 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2017 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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