Free Republic

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted Thursday to restore Obama-era net neutrality rules. The agency voted 3-2 along partisan lines to revive rules barring broadband providers from blocking or throttling internet traffic to some websites and speeding up access to others that pay extra fees. The move brings broadband under the purview of the FCC by classifying it as telecommunications service under Title II of the Communications Act. “Four years ago, the pandemic changed life as we know it,” FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel said at Thursday’s commission meeting. “We were told to stay home, hunker down and live online. So...

Interim Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’76 is expected to announce a working group that will consider a policy of institutional neutrality, a move that comes just months after the University became embroiled in controversy over its response to Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel.A formal stance of neutrality, in which Harvard would refrain from making political statements as an institution, would be a marked shift from the University’s current approach to politics. It would also, in theory, help the University avoid the pressure it’s faced in the past to take political positions on contentious issues — such as the...

A group of Swiss lawmakers has moved forward a proposal to allow countries to give Swiss-made weapons to Ukraine, in a move that would soften Switzerland’s centuries-old policy of neutrality toward foreign conflicts."The majority of the committee believes Switzerland must offer its contribution to European security, which requires more substantial aid to Ukraine," the Swiss parliamentary security committee said in a statement.The decision would represent a significant break from the policy of Swiss neutrality, though its supporters insist that the measure would not violate their law of neutrality since Bern would not be sending weapons directly.Switzerland’s neutrality has held strong...

Switzerland's historic neutrality is no longer: moments ago Reuters reported that the Swiss government had joined the EU in adopting sanctions on Russia, freezing assets of targeted companies and people effective immediately:SWISS GOVERNMENT SAYS ADOPTS EU SANCTIONS ON RUSSIASWISS GOVERNMENT SAYS FREEZES ASSETS OF TARGETED PEOPLE AND COMPANIES EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELYSWISS GOVERNMENT SAYS ADOPTS FINANCIAL SANCTIONS AGAINST PRESIDENT PUTIN AND OTHER RUSSIAN OFFICIALSSwiss President Ignazio Cassis said that adopting the EU sanctions against Russia was a unique, difficult step that required careful consideration. Previously, on Sunday, he said that Switzerland’s neutrality must be preserved and it stood ready to offer its...

President Joe Biden will sign an executive order Friday seeking to restore the Obama-era net neutrality rules. Biden will sign an executive order to call for more regulation and enforcement against big tech and large telecommunication companies to spur more competition. Among the other regulations, the executive order will encourage the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to reinstate the Obama-era net neutrality rules that would prohibit blocking, throttling, and paid prioritization.

Imagine asking the principal of your child’s high school about the education the students receive about the Holocaust only to be told that he couldn’t say the Holocaust is “a factual, historical event”. It took five days for a mom in Florida to receive that email response. In April 2018 a mother who wishes to remain anonymous for obvious reasons simply wanted to check that education about the Holocaust is a top priority for teachers at Spanish River Community High School in Palm Beach County, Florida. The principal, William Latson, provided a stunning answer. He said that the students...

CNN’s Jim Acosta writes in his memoir that “neutrality for the sake of neutrality” was ineffective in the era of President Trump, according to excerpts published by The Guardian. The CNN White House correspondent writes in his book, called “Enemy of the People: A Dangerous Time to Tell the Truth in America," his confrontations with Trump or other White House officials have “bothered some people” and that he has been guilty of “grandstanding” and “showboating." Acosta also acknowledges accusations of bias against the Trump administration, writing “Neutrality for the sake of neutrality doesn’t really serve us in the age of...

Transcript: Net Neutrality means that the government will--one day--control the internet. "Wait a second!" I can you hear you saying. "That sounds bad." But almost everyone you know says that Net Neutrality is good. Doesn't "neutral" mean that no one is picking winners and losers, that everyone is equal? Maybe according to the dictionary, but not according to the people behind the Net Neutrality movement. For them, "neutral" means the government regulates the internet like a public utility--and that means bureaucrats making key decisions about how the internet is run. And that's exactly what happened in 2015. The Federal Communications...

When politicians argue that we should not 'legislate morality,' they are engaging in a theater of the absurd. Christians are watching with growing concern as U.S. senators increasingly employ anti-Christian litmus tests against judicial nominees and political appointees. Last year, Democrat Sen. Dianne Feinstein declaring to then-nominee Amy Coney Barrett that “the dogma lives loudly within you,” referring to her strong Catholic faith. As John Daniel Davidson recently argued in the Federalist, we can surely expect the same treatment for another devout Catholic — Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. Davidson and others rightly contend that such a litmus test is...

Parts of the Federal Communication Commission’s repeal of net neutrality is slated to take effect on April 23, causing worry among internet users who fear the worst from their internet service providers. However, many experts believe there won’t be immediate changes come Monday, but that ISPs will wait until users aren’t paying attention to make their move. In December, the Republican-led FCC repealed net neutrality protections that were first set up under the Obama Administration. The repeal did away with rules that inhibited ISPs from slowing down access or prioritizing their own content, and quickly became a point of contention...

New Jersey on Monday became the latest state to implement its own net neutrality rules following the Federal Communications Commission’s repeal of the Obama-era consumer protections. Gov. Phil Murphy (D) signed an executive order prohibiting all internet service providers that do business with the state from blocking, throttling or favoring web content. “We may not agree with everything we see online, but that does not give us a justifiable reason to block the free, uninterrupted, and indiscriminate flow of information,” Murphy said in a statement. “And, it certainly doesn’t give certain companies or individuals a right to pay their way...

The FCC will vote today to repeal the rules that require internet service providers to treat all data on the Internet the same. (right as of this posting they are taking a break and will be back)

The Irish government has been accused of selling out Irish neutrality. It comes as the European Council has adopted the decision to establish a European Union defense pact, known as PESCO. Portugal and Ireland are the latest countries to join the pact. However, Sinn Féin Member of the European Parliament, Matt Carthy, said there has been “zero public debate” on the issue. “Among the most ludicrous argument proponents asserted was that we needed to sell off Irish neutrality in order to show support for the EU and its values,” Carthy said. “Since when did increasing national defense budgets, creating new...

Regulations: When FCC Chairman Ajit Pai announced plans to repeal the Obama administration's heavy-handed "net neutrality" regulations, critics acted as if the world were coming to an end. Actual consumers, however, aren't likely to notice any difference, because the "problem" those rules were supposed to solve has always been wildly exaggerated.

Everyone agrees that the Internet should be free and open. How it’s achieved? Well, that’s the issue After signaling that it would for months, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission on Tuesday revealed its plan to dismantle regulations that ensure equal access to the Internet, a concept known as “net neutrality.” The regulations classify broadband access as a telecommunications service, which subjects it to “common carrier” provisions that bar Internet service providers from discriminating against how broadband is used. The regulations were passed in February 2015 by the FCC, then led by chairman Tom Wheeler. Wheeler’s successor Ajit Pai, a vocal...

Can anyone explain Net Neutrality for me? I have been reading different commentaries and it seems like the regulations put in place by Obama were preserving the freedom of usage and access. But, I naturally don't trust him or the way it is all being presented.

Breitbart News spoke with Phil Kerpen, president of American Commitment, about his organization’s opposition to the FCC’s broadband privacy rule. Kerpen told Breitbart News that the criticism against removing this regulation is unwarranted. “This is a deliberate disinformation campaign from the usual suspects from the tech-left and the media, and they’re completely misrepresenting the issue, and the conservatives are falling for the fake news narrative,” he told Breitbart News. “Up until 2015, the FTC protected consumer privacy, and then the FCC Net Neutrality order eviscerated the consumer protections at the FTC by pre-empting FTC’s jurisdiction. The FCC then came around...

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia says the idea of religious neutrality is not grounded in the country's constitutional traditions and that God has been good to the U.S. exactly because Americans honor him.Scalia was speaking Saturday at Archbishop Rummel High School in Metairie,.....Scalia, who was appointed by President Ronald Reagan in 1986, has consistently been one of the court's more conservative members.He told the audience at the Catholic school that there is "no place" in the country's constitutional traditions for the idea that the state must be neutral between religion and its absence.He also said there is "nothing wrong" with...

Swiss army chief Andre Blattmann warned, in a Swiss newspaper article on Sunday, the risks of social unrest in Europe are soaring. Recalling the experience of 1939/1945, Blattman fears the increasing aggression in public discourse is an explosively hazardous situation, and advises the Swiss people to arm themselves and warns that the basis for Swiss prosperity is "being called into question."

The media silence was deafening on Friday as the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) launched “Net Neutrality” regulations–possibly the most far-reaching and intrusive regulatory action of the 21st century. When Breitbart News published “Everybody Equal, But Google Much More Equal” in February, revealing how the FCC’s Democratic majority gave Google the “heads up” on the secret regulations and allowed executives to tweak the deal, there was a huge uproar. But now that the Internet is under the FCC’s “Ministry of Innovation,” the media seem to have moved on. As Seton Motley noted at RedState, there was no mention in the tech...