CYBERSPACE—With the impending end of net neutrality rules, following an FCC decision in December rolling back the Obama-era regulations that guaranteed equal treatment of all online content by internet providers, 50 United States senators have raised at least some hope that the FCC decision may be stopped.
“Net neutrality” refers to a set of regulations that prevent internet service providers from arbitrarily blocking certain sites and content providers, or slowing traffic from some sites while allowing others to ride in the internet fast lane. As AVN.com reported last month, the repeal of net neutrality rules will likely prove to be extremely bad news for porn.
The possible scenarios for the online porn industry in an environment without net neutrality range from blocking of adult sites by ISPs which could then require separate, expensive fees to access adult content providers, to outright censorship. Three states have already declared porn a “public health threat,” which could serve as justification for blacking out online adult sites completely.
But Democrats in the U.S. Senate on Tuesday announced that they have assembled 50 votes to pass a resolution that would overturn the FCC decision and, at least in theory, restore the Obama net neutrality regulations. Because such a vote would require only a simple majority, they need one more Republican to sign on.
Currently Susan Collins of Maine is the only Republican pledging to vote in favor of overturning the FCC repeal decision.
"With full caucus support it's clear that Democrats are committed to fighting to keep the Internet from becoming the Wild West where ISPs are free to offer premium service to only the wealthiest customers while average consumers are left with far inferior options,” Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chick Schumer said on Tuesday.
A Senate vote to repeal net neutrality, however, would be largely symbolic at this point. The bill would need to then go to the House of Representatives where it would need 23 Republicans to sign on—assuming every one of the 193 House Democrats voted to repeal, and Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan even allowed the bill to come to the floor for a vote.
And if all of those things actually happened, Donald Trump could still veto the repeal bill when it reached his Oval Office desk.
But the Democratic Senators announcement was not the only, and possibly not the most important development on Tuesday in the move to preserve net neutrality rules. A lawsuit filed by 21 of the 50 state attorneys general at a federal appeals court in Washington aims to force courts to step in and block the FCC move.
While the new internet rules doing away with net neutrality requirements will not take effect for weeks, the state attorneys general said that they were filing their lawsuit early as a precautionary measure.
Mozilla, the maker of the popular Firefox browser—and also makers of the now-defunct Netscape, the browser which in the 1990s paved the way for the World Wide Web as it now exists—filed its own lawsuit on Tuesday to preserve the 2015 Open Internet Order, the net neutrality rules put in place by President Barack Obama.
