Rep. Mike Doyle (D-Pa.) vowed to keep fighting to nullify the FCC's network neutrality rules rollback, which went into effect Monday (June 11), but in outlining the road ahead, he also put a spotlight on the up-Hill battle.

Doyle is shepherding the House version of a Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolution to nullify FCC chair Ajit Pai's Restoring Internet Freedom Order. It has already passed the Senate, but the House is a far steeper climb.

Related: House CRA Teed Up

In a statement, Doyle slammed the rollback. 

"Americans lost an important right today when the FCC’s order nullifying the federal Net Neutrality policy went into effect,” he said. “People won’t see any major changes today, but unless Net Neutrality is restored, consumers, innovator, and small businesses will see their service deteriorate, their choices decrease and their costs go up over time as Internet Service Providers start throttling internet speeds, blocking content and prioritizing service to hurt their competitors.”

ISPs have been saying nothing would change Monday, so critics are arguing that that is just a strategy to avoid immediate pushback, and, like the lobster in a pot with the water temperature raised slowly, the repercussions will only become apparent over time.

Doyle also said that he currently has 170 votes for a discharge petition that would force Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) to hold a floor vote on the CRA. Ryan is unlikely to do so otherwise.

"We just need 50 more to get a vote," Doyle said, but that "just" is a big ask since the 170 does not even include all the Democrats, and the 50 more would have to include a couple dozen Republicans.

Net neutrality activists, including in Congress, hope to use the issue of the net neutrality rule rollback to turn more red seats blue in the midterm elections if they can't convince current members to support the CRA, which would have to pass in this Congress or forever hold its peace.

Republicans continue to try to get Democrats to drop the CRA and work on bipartisan net neutrality legislation, but Democrats counter that is a stall tactic and the bills they have offered up would impermissibly narrow the FCC broadband regulatory authority, a price they are not willing to pay to restore bright-line rules against blocking, throttling or even paid prioritization, says one highly placed Democratic Hill staffer.

At noon Wednesday (May 16), the Senate is scheduled to begin consideration of the legislative maneuver to nullify the FCC's network neutrality deregulation.

That is when a motion will be made to proceed to consideration of S.J. Res. 52, the Congressional Review Act resolution rolling back the Restoring Internet Freedom Order, which eliminated the rules against blocking, throttling and paid prioritization and reversed the classification of ISPs as Title II telecommunications services subject to common-carrier regulations.

It could pass if ailing Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) is unable to vote or if the Democrats pick up another Republican. That would buoy net-neutrality activists, but it is still a very long shot for the CRA to make it past the other two houses, the House of Representatives and the White House. One Hill staffer speaking on background, however, said activists have been telling Hill Democrats that some three dozen moderate Republicans in the House could potentially be swayed.

Related: Net-Neutrality Rules Rollback Effective June 11

The resolution was discharged from the Commerce Committee and put on the Senate floor calendar May 9.

The joint resolution is only two sentences long, but it is freighted with meaning for net-neutrality activists trying to restore the bright-line rules and ISPs who pushed for their elimination.

Joint Resolution                                                                                                                                                      "Providing for congressional disapproval under chapter 8 of title 5, United States Code, of the rule submitted by the Federal Communications Commission relating to 'Restoring Internet Freedom.'                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  "Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, that Congress disapproves the rule submitted by the Federal Communications Commission relating to 'Restoring Internet Freedom' (83 Fed. Reg. 7852, February 22, 2018), and such rule shall have no force or effect."

The resolution has 48 co-sponsors, 46 Democrats and two independents, as well as one Republican vote in its camp, Sen. Susan Collins of Maine.

The Senate has until June 12 to vote on the resolution, while the House has until the end of the year.

The resolution currently needs one vote in the Senate to pass, while it is dozens of votes short in the House and is unlikely to be signed by the president if it got that far. President Trump supported the FCC's rules rollback, though predicting the president's future actions based on past statements is problematic.

Senators did not wait until the net neutrality CRA was officially opened for debate to debate it, which some did in dueling morning speeches.

Sen. Majority Leader Mitch McDonnell asid the CRA did not seek to reign in ove-rregulation, which he suggested was the proper use, but to "reimpose it." He said the CRA would handicap the FCC's ability to revive the

Restoring Internet Freedom order even if they were seen as necessary. That is because the CRA resolution would prevent the re-imposition of substantially similar deregs by the agency.

McConnell said Republicans have reached out on bipartisan legislation, but said Democrats had made it clear that the CRA, which would not ultimately pass, was about the mid-term elections.

Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) probably summed up the Senate Republicans' view of the CRA: "If it passes, it will be a statement and nothing more."

Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), the lead sponsor of the CRA, said the CRA was needed to put consumers ahead of the rich and powerful and the vote would be "on the future of the internet."

Markey said the vote was about showing whose side senators were on. He also called it "my Congressional Review Act resolution to save network neutrality." Markey said that if the dereg takes effect June 11, consumers will be left defenseless against big ISPs and their lobbyists, whose pledges of self-regulation he suggested were hollow.

"We need comprehensive privacy legislation and real net neutrality legislation enacted at the federal level now, not later, and the CRA vote just delays that and gives members of Congress an easy out." -Mike Montgomery, CALinnovates

Nearly every day brings new stories of children being tracked, Russians being indicted, and online-fueled hate exploding into real-world violence – all while the big tech platforms that enable this chaos report record earnings and shrug off Congressional oversight without breaking a sweat.

The internet has never been more vital to our lives, our culture and our economy, but it has never been more out of balance.

The American people are demanding comprehensive action to rein in these giant platforms, protect our privacy and permanently keep cyberspace open and free – with 80% believing the big platforms haven’t done enough to secure their networks. Nearly 60% are concerned the government won’t do enough to solve the problem. Yet, amazingly, the only internet bill on the agenda in Congress is a backward-looking resolution that will actually reduce our privacy protections.

The resolution is called the “CRA” (for Congressional Review Act), and it’s being pitched as a way to protect net neutrality. But that’s a complete charade. We need comprehensive privacy legislation and real net neutrality legislation enacted at the federal level now, not later, and the CRA vote just delays that and gives members of Congress an easy out instead of pushing them to draft, debate and support real, bipartisan, pro-consumer legislation.

The CRA doesn’t enact any permanent net neutrality protections. It also does nothing to protect our privacy, secure the internet from Russian bots or election attacks, bring accountability to all tech platforms across the board, or boost innovation and ensure competition.

All the CRA would do if it passed (something that itself is extremely unlikely in a Republican Congress) is temporarily restore an old and out-of-date version of net neutrality that applies to broadband providers only and then send the entire issue back to the Federal Communications Commission, where anything could happen – including reversal of even those limited rules.

And worse, in the process, the CRA would strip away one of the key internet privacy protections Americans currently enjoy. Right now, the Federal Trade Commission is the lead privacy cop for the big cable and telecom companies. It protects Americans from unfair and deceptive practices online, including breaches of privacy policies and other abuses of our data. This is why the Obama Administration made “strong enforcement by the Federal Trade Commission” the centerpiece of its Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights in 2012.

But the CRA would eliminate the FTC’s jurisdiction over internet providers – creating a privacy gap when more data protection, not less, is necessary.

Congress has an enormous opportunity in front of it. There is wide, bipartisan agreement that we need new, stronger rules of the road for the entire internet – tech platforms, broadband providers, and any entity collecting and using consumer data.

The recent Facebook hearings had members of both parties demanding accountability and calling for solutions. One Representative from a district decimated by online opioid sales put it most directly, saying, “Facebook is actually enabling an illegal activity, and in so doing you are hurting people.”

It’s not often the stars align in this way – and it would be a dereliction for Congress to squander this chance for real progress in favor of an empty, feel-good CRA.

Instead, Congress should be driving toward comprehensive legislation to strengthen our privacy; make net neutrality permanent; apply it to all companies that pick and choose what we can see and do online; and require real cybersecurity and data protection that includes strong penalties for companies that breach our trust.

That’s the kind of vote a woke Congress would take.

Mike Montgomery is the executive director of CALinnovates, a technology advocacy organization.

WASHINGTON — Could a return to Title II-based internet regulations give the current president even more power over the commonwealth?

That was one of several possibilities invoked last week as both sides of the debate over the Federal Communications Commission’s network neutrality rule rollback talked about finding a way to protect both the openness of the Web, and the business model that drives investment in the networks that carry what has become an internet of everything.

Related: Why Do Democrats Want to Let Trump Violate Net Neutrality?

But that common ground will be hard to reclaim from the scorched-earth rhetoric that has characterized the fight.

Both of those sides came together last week on Capitol Hill, in a discussion hosted by the Congressional Internet Caucus, to talk about possible approaches. Try as they might, though, the conversation proved to be as much about what still separates them.

Both sides can agree on rules preventing blocking and throttling of content, even restoring them to the FCC. However, Matthew Brill, a partner at Latham & Watkins — whose clients on the net neutrality front have included NCTA-The Internet & Television Association — said the new rules, with the Federal Trade Commission overseeing broadband practices and the FCC enforcing internet service provider transparency, should be sufficient.

In any event, Brill said, the toggling back and forth between net neutrality regimes as the political control changes is not the way to go.

While Brill and representatives of public interest non-profit Public Knowledge and INCOMPAS, whose members include major edge providers, said they were willing to talk, Public Knowledge continues to push for a Congressional Review Act resolution to nullify the FCC’s December rollback of the rules, something Brill said is not helpful.

Altered States
Public Knowledge and others also continue to back state efforts to reverse the FCC decision through their own neutrality bills or executive orders mandating neutrality in ISP contracts with governors, an effort that is gaining traction in blue states also taking aim at the rule rollback through lawsuits. Brill, by contrast, said those efforts are not constructive.

Net neutrality activists want the FCC to be able to regulate broadband rates if said rates are a barrier to deployment. Chris Lewis, at Public Knowledge, said the FCC “should be empowered to look at pricing and if that is hurting broadband access.” ISPs say the FCC should not be in the business of regulating broadband rates, either through proscriptive rules or through complaint-driven rate regulation.

Currently there are two legislative efforts prompted by the rule rollback: the Congressional Review Act measure and a Republican bill, courtesy of Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), who chairs the subcommittee on Communications and the Internet, that would prevent blocking and throttling, but not paid prioritization.

But again, those appear to be points of contention rather than possibilities for agreement. ISPs strongly oppose the CRA, while net neutrality activists are working feverishly to collect enough votes to pass it, which is the longest of long shots.

And while ISPs like the looks of the Blackburn bill, activists have blasted it.

Berin Szoka of think tank TechFreedom attempted to unite both sides last week against a return of Title II by invoking the fear of a too-powerful Donald Trump.

He said that a return to common carrier-based net-neutrality regulation, as the CRA would do, allows the president, rather than ISPs, to control access to the internet if he chose to exercise his war powers available on a rolling basis due to the never-ending war against terror.

The suggestion that it might take such a threat to get both sides to agree on legislation indicates that talk on the Hill and elsewhere of a bipartisan resolution to the network neutrality debate remains mostly that.

Former Democratic House Communications Subcommittee chair Rick Boucher, now with the Internet Innovation Alliance, said Democrats should drop their effort to nullify the FCC's Dec. 14 net neutrality rules rollback and instead work toward legislation mirroring the 2010 Open Internet order.

That order put forth the compromise rules based in Title I that virtually all the ISPs agreed to.

Boucher said activists pushing a Congressional Review Act resolution in Congress to roll back the rollback are delaying a legislative solution that would insure an open internet for everyone.

Related: Sen. Kennedy Pressed on Net Neutrality CRA

In a commentary for Bloomberg/BNA, Boucher said the 2010 would be a "useful" model for that legislative solution.

"Codification of the requirements of that rule, along with a provision declaring broadband to be an information service, would be a simple and straightforward legislative enactment giving both Democrats and Republicans satisfaction on their key priorities," he said. "For Democrats, the priority is open internet rules similar to the ones Democrats endorsed with the 2010 Open Internet order.

Related: Coming to Terms With Title II

For Republicans, the statute would return broadband to information-service status. It’s a win-win solution that should receive bipartisan support.”

Boucher said an added benefit of such legislation is that it could create online privacy protections that apply to the edge as well as ISPs, "so that consumers won’t have to wonder what protections they have, depending on how and where they access the internet."

Boucher said he is confident the two sides can come together, a sentiment expressed earlier in the week by former Communications Subcommittee chair and current full committee chair Greg Walden (R-Ore.), but that would appear to be a long shot given the current tenor of debate in D.C. and, specifically, most Democrats hard line on returning to a Title II regime -- a nonstarter for Republicans.

All the Senate's Democrats and a majority of House Dems have said they would support the CRA nullifying the rules and returning to Title II.

Boucher has been consistent in his opposition to Title II. As chairman of the subcommittee back in 2010, he said he would prefer legislation establishing targeted network openness principles to the FCC's proposal of applying Title II regulations to the transmission component of broadband.

Boucher is currently head of the government strategies group at Sidley & Austin in Washington.

Rep. Mike Doyle (D-Pa.), ranking member of the House Energy & Commerce Committee Communications Subcommittee, said he will propose using the Congressional Review Act (CRA) to overturn the FCC's rollback of net-neutrality rules if FCC chair Ajit Pai does not stand down.

That is the legislative maneuver Republicans used to invalidate a number of Obama-era regs earlier this year, including the repeal of the broadband privacy rules established under the Tom Wheeler-led FCC.

Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) Tuesday (Dec. 12) called on Congress to step in, as well, to resolve the net-neutrality regulation debate, but not that way.

“The answer to monopolies has always been regulation and competition, and as much as some of the FCC commissioners don’t want to acknowledge it, net neutrality and the regulation of ISPs under Title II are essential for providing real competition in the broadband marketplace," Doyle said.

Doyle said he and dozens of other legislators would be sending a letter Wednesday (Dec. 13) urging Pai not to repeal the regs, but that if the FCC does so Dec. 14, as planned, Doyle would introduce the CRA-based legislation.

It is essentially a shot across the bow since the Republicans controlling Congress are fans of the reg rollback. Republicans did use the CRA to reverse the FCC's vote, under Pai's Democratic predecessor, on a broadband privacy framework.

It is the longest of long shots, but Democratic Reps. Mike Doyle (D-Pa.) and Mike Capuano (D-Mass.) have launched a petition on Whitehouse.gov calling on the president to veto S.J. Res. 34, the Congressional Review Act resolution that that repealed the FCC's broadband privacy rules.

The president is widely expected to sign the resolution and repeal the regulations.

The resolution narrowly passed both the Senate (last week) and the House (Tuesday) and is headed to the President's desk, although the Dems are hoping to stay the President's pen hand.

At press time, the petition had 120 signatures toward the 100,000 it needs to get a response from the White House, though it is unclear whether the new president is hewing to such a schedule. The resolution will likely be signed by then regardless.

The crux of the petition is "Don't let Internet providers spy and sell our online data. Please keep the FCC's Privacy Rules."

“This bill has been rushed through both the House and Senate at breakneck speed with one clear goal – to get it signed into law before the American People know about it,” Doyle said after launching the petition. Doyle managed the floor debate on the Democratic side March 28 before the Republicans voted 215-205 to roll back the rules, with 15 Republicans breaking ranks to vote against it.

“Americans do not want their Internet browsing history and sensitive personal information used by their ISP without their knowledge for advertising or any other purposes,” Capuano said. “I cannot imagine why anyone would support this.”

Capuano was arguably the loudest critic, bellowing his dissent and suggesting he didn't want ISPs sharing his underwear size if bought a pair online.

The CRA overturns rules approved by a divided FCC Oct. 27 that required ISPs to get subscribers' permission to share Web browser and app use info and impose data security and breach notification requirements.