torpedo
Nearly nine months after federal regulators voted to do away with net neutrality rules instituted under the Obama administration, California has brought them back in the state.
Gov. Jerry Brown on Sunday signed ambitious legislation that prevents broadband and wireless companies from blocking, throttling or otherwise hindering access to internet content, and from favoring some websites over others by charging for faster speeds. U.S. Department of Justice officials have voiced an intent to sue over the new law, according to the Washington Post.
The bill’s passage in the Legislature in August capped months of feuding between tech advocates and telecom industry lobbyists. Telecom giants such as AT&T and Verizon Communications poured millions into killing the legislation, while grass-roots activists fought back with crowdsourced funding and social media campaigns.
California leaders cheered the move, calling the new state rules vital to protect fair access to the internet and part of the state’s resistance to the Trump administration on tech, immigration and climate change policies.
National Democrats, including House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, urged Brown to sign the legislation as net neutrality has become a rallying issue for the party’s candidates in House races across the country.
Senate Bill 822 reinstates the federal regulations at the state level. But it also restricts some “zero-rated” data plans, package deals that allow companies such as Verizon or Comcast to exempt some calls, texts or other content from counting against a customer’s data plan.
The legislation primarily prohibits plans that exempt the same type of content from some companies over others — video streamed on YouTube but not Hulu, for example. The bill also tasks the state attorney general with evaluating potential evasion of the net neutrality rules on a case-by-case basis.
Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), who introduced the bill, said the push for net neutrality legislation would protect small businesses, activists and others who couldn’t pay their way out of internet “slow lanes.”
More:
http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-ca-net-neutrality-california-signed-governor-jerry-brown-20180930-story.html
Hard to believe it's been 11 months of non-stop breads.