Democrats in the United States House of Representatives are going all out to pass the “Save the Internet Act,” a new bill that would overturn the Donald Trump-controlled Federal Communication commission’s 2017 vote to eliminate net neutrality rules. The bill would essentially restore the rules as they were put in place in 2015, under the Barack Obama administration—and now House Democrats say the bill will come to a floor vote during the week of April 8, whether Republicans like it or not, according to the communications industry site Phone Arena.
Net neutrality is the set of regulations that prevent internet service providers from blocking or slowing traffic for certain sites, while opening up an “internet fast lane” for others. Without net neutrality, ISPs have the freedom to block sites that either do not pay an extra fee for the “fast lane” service, or that the ISPs for whatever reason simply decide to censor, as AVN.com reported last year.
With more than a half-dozen states—most recently Arizona—considering or passing resolutions declaring porn a “public health crisis,” porn sites are clearly vulnerable to blocking by ISPs in the absence of net neutrality rules.
As the Democrats move toward passing the bill that aims to restore net neutrality protections, a new poll shows that the U.S. public is behind them. In the poll, released Monday by Comparitech, 82 percent of those surveyed said that they supported net neutrality.
And though congressional Republicans have overwhelmingly supported the Trump-controlled FCC’s repeal of net neutrality rules, among the public, support for net neutrality is broadly bipartisan—with 87 percent of Democrats and 77 percent of Republicans, along with 80 percent of independents, all registering their support for net neutrality protections.
On the other hand, only 31 percent of Republicans rated the net neutrality issue as “very important,” while 61 percent of Democrats rated the issue as “very” important.”
Support for net neutrality was also consistently high across generations, with Baby Boomers, Generation X’ers and Millennials all favoring the rules at rates within a few points of 80 percent. Actually, GenX’ers had the lowest support, at 79.3 percent.
“The only place this bill is controversial is in Washington, D.C. It's not controversial out in America,” said Pennsylvania Democrat Mike Doyle, the House Energy and Commerce Committee chair who is leading the push for the bill, in a CNet Interview. “This isn't an issue that they're having a raging debate about out in the hinterlands.”
Photo By Slowking4 / Wikimedia Commons
