14 DAY TRIAL // A couple of weeks ago I was writing about a new petition that was created to ask the Federal Communications Commission to protect net neutrality by reasserting the agency’s clear authority over the communications infrastructure in the United States by going back on a decision made several years ago that declassified broadband as a telecommunications service subject to carriage rules.
This came after a court ruled against the FCC in favor of Verizon, banning the Commission from imposing rules to Internet providers regarding discrimination against certain types of traffic.
Following the ruling, the FCC can no longer enforce such rules because it changed the classification of broadband providers a few years ago.
Well, the petition demanding that the FCC does something about the issue has now reached the 1 million signatures mark, a coalition of consumer advocacy groups announced.
“On Thursday, Free Press led a coalition of organizations—including the ACLU, Avaaz, Common Cause, ColorOfChange, CREDO, DailyKos, Demand Progress, Fight for the Future, the Harry Potter Alliance, MoveOn, RootsAction, and the Sierra Club's SierraRise community—that delivered more than 1 million petitions to the Federal Communications Commission urging the agency to restore Net Neutrality,” the announcement reads.
“Just two weeks after a federal court threw out the FCC’s Net Neutrality rules, we delivered petitions from more than 1 million people who support the freedom to connect and communicate online. It’s time for the agency to correct its past mistakes, reclassify broadband as a telecommunications service, and restore Net Neutrality for good,” said Josh Levy, Free Press Internet Campaign Director.
He continues by saying that Net neutrality is the reason all these petitions even exist, which is why it’s important to protect everyone’s ability to say what they want and go where they want online without having the Internet Service Providers interfere.