With the 115th Congress coming to a close, Demand Progress is pulling out all the stops to try and pressure the remaining Democratic holdouts--16 of them--to support rolling back the FCC's net neutrality deregulation.

The Congressional Review Act resolution nullifying the FCC's Restoring Internet Freedom squeaked through the Senate, but couldn't pass the House without quite a few Republicans also signing on, the chances of which are slimmest to none. But Demand Progress is still trying to shame the holdouts into backing the CRA, accusing them of being "bought by Comcast"--and AT&T and Verizon.

Related: Activists Make Last-Minute Push for CRA

To make that point clear, "Democrats BOUGHT by Comcast" is the subject line on the Demand Progress email seeking donations for a last-minute push for nullification of the FCC deregulation.

"Some organizations are reluctant to call out Democrats when they do the wrong thing," said Demand Progress. "Not us. As a nonpartisan organization, we expect Democrats to live up to their campaign promises and pro-net neutrality rhetoric, and we're not afraid to hold them accountable."

Actually, the top eight members of Congress getting Comcast money are all Democrats according to OpenSecrets.org, seven of which did vote to repeal the Restoring Internet Freedom order. In fact, in the 2018 election cycle, Comcast contributed to 150 House Democrats, the vast majority of which support the CRA. So, clearly, getting a contribution from Comcast is hardly a gauge of where those legislators would stand on the issue.

The Trump Administration's response to Gov. Jerry Brown's signing Sunday (Sept. 30) of California's tough new net neutrality law was swift and definitive: Justice is suing the state. But there was plenty of other reaction to the effort to re-regulate broadband access in the face of the FCC's order that such efforts were preempted.

“While not surprising, California’s net neutrality effort reaffirms its leaders’ total lack of understanding of how technology or our economy actually works, particularly its ban on paid prioritization," said FCC commissioner Michael O'Rielly, who voted to deregulate ISPs and eliminate the rules against blocking, throttling and paid prioritization. "If allowed to stand, the law would be incredibly detrimental to American consumers and the continued growth of the Internet. Thankfully, this is precisely why our nation’s founding fathers crafted a Commerce Clause to the U.S. Constitution and why I pushed so hard for the Commission’s December action to include strong preemption provisions. The DOJ’s action to challenge this overreach is both appreciated and appropriate."

Democratic commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel, who strongly opposed the elimination of the rules, saw it a lot differently, and tweeted her thanks to the governor.

[embed]https://twitter.com/JRosenworcel/status/1046554401647841281[/embed]

“The enactment of California’s net neutrality law is a huge victory for the free and open internet,” said Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.). “California has shown Washington and the rest of the country that the internet warriors fighting to save net neutrality will not be stopped."

The Taxpayers Protection Alliance argues that new net regs will leave taxpayers on the hook as the feds and states battle it out in court using taxpayer dollars. Then there is the less free data and reduced investment, which it says will not benefit the state's "struggling households." Paid prioritization is a way for companies to subsidize bandwidth use for a particular service, which supporters like the alliance say is consumer-friendly and opponents say is a way to favor one service over another, which isn't neutral.

"[P]assing massive and intrusive internet regulations means fewer options for consumers and internet providers," said Taxpayers Protection Alliance president David Williams. "[T]outed by the law’s backers will be few and far between. Recent data from the Wehe app shows that, even in the post-Title II world, throttling is rare and used solely for network management."

Demand Progress and Public Knowledge, some of net neutrality rules' biggest backers, were celebrating Sunday.

"This is a big day for net neutrality," said Robert Cruickshank, campaign director at Demand Progress. "Gov. Jerry Brown has just restored a free and open internet to the 40 million people of California — the world’s fifth largest economy and home to many major tech companies. This law passed with a large bipartisan majority thanks to an unprecedented outpouring of community activism the likes of which Sacramento has not seen for some time. We now urge the U.S. House of Representatives, especially members representing California, to quickly sign the discharge petition and force a vote to use the Congressional Review Act to restore net neutrality for all 50 states.”

"As is often the case, California is setting a strong example for Congress and other states on the type of net neutrality protections an overwhelming majority of Americans expect," said Public Knowledge VP Chris Lewis. 

"Only in Washington D.C. is this controversial due to the influence of broadband provider lobbyists. Even in California, that influence was strong, but an outpouring of support from consumers and small businesses helped to remind policymakers just how popular net neutrality protections are."

The Writers Guild of American West was also pleased. Content creators are concerned about distributors having too much power over the internet, which they see as an alternative to traditional video distribution channels already controlled by consolidated companies. 

Related: Amazon Slams California Privacy Law

"Once enacted, this landmark net neutrality legislation will serve as a model for states nationwide to follow," said the guild. "The Internet today is where we connect, where we organize and speak freely, and where we can choose what content we consume. With increasing attacks on our First Amendment rights and widespread corporate concentration, preserving an open Internet free from ISP interference is more important now than ever.”

U.S. Telecom, which represents ISPs, called for a 50-state legislative framework for protecting net neutrality. “We all support strong and enforceable net neutrality protections for every American – regardless of where they may live," said USTelecom president Jonathan Spalter. "But this bill is neither the way to get there, nor will it help advance the promise and potential of California’s innovation DNA," he said. "Rather than 50 states stepping in with their own conflicting open internet solutions, we need Congress to step up with a national framework for the whole internet ecosystem and resolve this issue once and for all.”

"This is a true grassroots victory," said California-based progressive group. CREDO Action. "Today, Californians won out against one of the most powerful lobbies in Sacramento. AT&T and other Big Telecom companies opposed this bill with everything they had. Thanks to hundreds of thousands of activists who would not give up the fight against all odds, Californians will have real, meaningful net neutrality protections. We thank Gov. Brown for standing with us and protecting the future of the internet and all our communities who depend on it."

The bill does not go into effect until 2020.

Network-neutrality fan Demand Progress is raising money for a campaign to preserve the FCC's rules in the face of what the group anticipates will be a rollback from the Trump Administration.

In an e-mail soliciting donations, the group points to a Breitbart News headline: "Trump Win Means FCC's 'Net Neutrality' Regulation is Dead," noting that the man behind the ultra-conservative news website, Steve Bannon, is now President-elect Donald Trump's chief strategist.

"To save net neutrality, we're going to need a grassroots mobilization as big as what it took to enact it in the first place," Demand Progress said.

"The good news is that Trump can't just get rid of net neutrality on his own," the group added. "He's going to have to go through a lengthy rule-making process, giving us months to mount opposition."

The top contenders for new FCC chair are said to be current senior FCC Republican commissioner Ajit Pai and American Enterprise Institute visiting scholar Jeffrey Eisenach, neither of which are fans of Title II reclassification.

Online petitions opposing the proposed AT&T-Time Warner merger have collected 115,000 signatures and counting, according to Demand Progress, Free Press and Credo Action, which are all hosting petitions on their Web pages. The wording is different but the message is the same.

"Stop the merger of AT&T and Time Warner, which would hurt consumers, decrease competition and drastically increase market concentration," the Credo petition says, which is targeted at the Justice Department's antitrust division (the FCC may or may not be vetting the deal depending on whether it can be structured to exclude the handful of FCC licenses Time Warner has).

The groups talk about the merger being "dangerous concentration of economic and political power," essentially lumping it in with other "megamergers" as being about lining the pockets of big business instead of consumer welfare.

"“Unless you’re a Time Warner shareholder, one of its corner-office executives, or an AT&T lobbyist, this merger would be catastrophic,” said Free Press field director Mary Alice Crim.

AT&T and Time Warner say the deal is about making the combined company a stronger online video competitor to traditional cable, particularly on the mobile broadband front.

The Senate Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee is scheduled to look into the competitive impact of the deal in a Dec. 7 hearing.

Nonprofit group Demand Progress is looking to flood the Federal Communications Commission with complaints about zero-rating plans as the FCC considers how to treat those business models under its network-neutrality general-conduct standard.

The group has already concluded the zero-rating plans violate the rules. “We need to make sure the FCC knows we’re watching and sets the precedent that violating net neutrality has real consequences,” it said in a June 1 email solicitation that linked to an online form letter complaining to the FCC.

As a condition of its deal to acquire Time Warner Cable, Charter is forbidden to use zero-rating plans, and FCC chairman Tom Wheeler has signaled that the plans, at least in the context of that merger, are anticompetitive.

Demand Progress has advised its supporters to personalize its complaint form letter, but if the docket fills with comments that begin, “AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon and Comcast are trying to sneak past net-neutrality rules,” it would be courtesy of the group’s one-stop-grousing online effort.

The FCC is currently vetting plans by Comcast, T-Mobile, Verizon and AT&T, but Demand Progress said it is mostly hearing from those companies and not others opposed to the plans.

Zero-rating plans are ones in which some services, particularly bandwidth-heavy video services, don’t count toward usage-based pricing caps (usage is not actually capped, but overages incur extra charges).

The FCC did not prohibit those under its net-neutrality rules, but under the general conduct standard can look at anything that potentially has an anticompetitive effect.

Young Entrepreneur Builds an App to Find OTT ‘Budget Bundles’

Entrepreneurial 21-year-old Griffin O’Brien is out to help people put together the right mix of paid streaming services to get the television they want (and can afford) without having to go the full cable, telco or satellite TV route.

He’s working on a “Budget Bundle” app consumers could use to sift through 30 primary over-the-top options — too many options for anyone to keep straight in their heads. There are places to find streaming reviews but “a glaring gap” between the glut of services and the consumer’s ability to cut the cord or graduate from being a cord never to a smart streamer.

O’Brien — son of former Time Warner Cable executive and serial investor Dan O’Brien — is getting attention via social-sharing of a write-up on Facebook, where he’s taking signups for a newsletter, and he would like to launch the app, with some help on the business side from his brother Matt, in the next several weeks. He’s learning how to take his idea from a database to an actual, developed product (and looking into protecting the algorithm legally). He’s also starting a summer internship at Turner in Atlanta and has another year to go in college before he graduates.

If it all comes together, O’Brien said he could stay with it in the fall, saying, “I’m really passionate about the service and think it could become something really great.”

Millennials who are leaving college, and Hispanics, who are big consumers of streaming products, are potential key audiences, and advertising or referral payments from OTT providers are potential revenue sources, he figures.

— Kent Gibbons

ISPs Get an Indie Label

An independently funded searchable database of Internet provider data has produced its own broadband nutrition labels, using the form the Federal Communications Commission provided for ISPs who want to make sure they provide all the network-management and pricing info required under the agency’s net-neutrality rules.

Rather than relying on those ISPs to come up with their own individual labels, the groups did their own research to create labels for a host of providers and posted them online. “We really just wanted to create more transparency in a market where there is a lot of gray area for most consumers,” said Alex Harrison, content coordinator for Broadband Search.

The overall goal of the 10-month-old site is to “help consumers make the best, most-educated choice when searching for Internet and TV,” Harrison told The Wire. “Think a mixture of Kayak and Angie’s List but for Internet and TV providers.”

— John Eggerton

Zero-rating plan foes got together over the weekend to collect signatures on a letter they plan to send today (March 28) to FCC chairman Tom Wheeler urging him to crack down on zero-rating plans before they "break the Net."

The FCC is currently investigating zero-rating plans -- in which some video content does not count against usage caps -- from a handful of top ISPs as part of its Open Internet general conduct standard of review for business practices that could impede a free and open Internet, including Comcast's Stream TV, which has a complaint filed against it.

The groups appear to have no doubt the practice violates both the spirit and the letter of the new FCC Open Internet rules.

"As currently offered, these plans enable ISPs to pick winners and losers online or create new tolls for websites and applications," they wrote.

Referring to the Comcast, AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile plans being vetted by the FCC, the groups say the services "distort competition, thwart innovation, threaten free speech and restrict consumer choice." Those are all harms the FCC's Open Internet rules were meant to prevent, they argue, and allowing them would be "a serious threat to the Open Internet."

The groups also made a point of saying the FCC's Open Internet order "ensures that Internet users control the content they access, not their ISPs."

"The Open Internet rules say that ISPs cannot pick winners and losers online by slowing down some applications and services while speeding up others," they added.

The net-neutrality rules do not hold edge providers to the same standard, however, since, as Wheeler has pointed out pointedly, the rules to not apply to them.

That disparity hit the fan last week when Netflix conceded its users did not have control over the Netflix content they accessed over AT&T and Verizon broadband service -- Netflix said it was limiting the quality to keep users under bandwidth caps, though the company added it was working on a technology to give users control over bit rates vis-a-vis bandwidth caps.

A spokesperson for those groups calling for no zero-rating plans was checking at press time whether they were also concerned about Netflix throttling online video without telling customers or the companies.

Among the groups signing on to the letter were MoveOn.org, ColorOfChange, Center for Media Justice, Fight for the Future, Demand Progress, Free Press and Open Technology Institute.

Free Press policy director Matt Wood said he sees a clear difference between ISPs as carriers subject to neutrality rules, and Netflix, which is not.

"The bottom line for me is that net neutrality prevents carriers from dictating what we say to each other,” he told Multichannel News. “It doesn't dictate what we say to each other ["we" including Netflix as a speaker]. Netflix is free to transmit its content however it wants. If users want to leave that behind because they don't like that, that's fine. I'm not here to defend anything Netflix is doing, but you can't shoehorn this into net neutrality because it is not about the carrier in the middle interfering with content."

"Free data services are pro-consumer, innovative offerings that we should all embrace," said Brad Gillen, EVP at CTIA, which represents wireless ISPs. "It should also come as no surprise that mobile consumers love free data so they can watch videos, listen to music or use the Internet without charges to their monthly data allowance. The FCC should reject efforts to take away from consumers these free data services and options."

“To claim that zero rating is anything other than good for consumers makes zero sense," says Mobile Future board chair Jonathan Spalter. "It is almost as ridiculous as defending Netflix on Friday (March 25) for secretly throttling video to millions of unsuspecting customers and turning around on Monday to attack consumer-friendly free data offerings. "New service options that make it easier for consumers to afford access to more content is a good thing. Free mobile data offerings give consumers more than they pay for, which is particularly important for price-sensitive consumers. If the FCC is trying to encourage competition and consumer choice, it will reject efforts to thwart carriers from vying for customers with differentiated new service offerings. Doing anything less will make America’s wireless consumers the ultimate losers.”

Mobile Future members include Samsung, Verizon, and Qualcomm.