Tech firms led by Mozilla publish open letter to the FCC, urging US regulator to urgently reinstate net neutrality rules in America
Mozilla is once again leading the tech sector’s efforts to ensure that net neutrality laws apply once again in the United States.
The Firefox developer, along with a number of other tech firms, outlined its motives in a blog post, and published an open letter calling on the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to urgently reinstate the net neutrality rules that were removed under the Trump administration.
Mozilla, along with other big name tech firms in July 2017 made clear their opposition to Trump’s reversal of Obama’s net neutrality rules.
Open letter
In the open letter to FCC Acting Chair Jessica Rosenworcel, Mozilla, along with ADT, Dropbox, Eventbrite, Reddit, Vimeo and Wikimedia said that net neutrality is “critical for preserving the internet as a free and open medium that promotes innovation and spurs economic growth.”
“We are writing to express our support for the reinstatement of net neutrality protections through Federal Communications Commission (FCC) action,” the firms wrote.
“Net neutrality simply preserves the environment that has allowed the internet to become an engine for economic growth,” they noted. “The rules serve as protections that users have in their relationship with internet service providers, preventing ISPs from blocking, throttling, or prioritizing traffic for payment.”
“While our products may provide different services, we all recognize the value of these protections for our businesses and the broader internet ecosystem,” they concluded. “We support the efforts of the FCC to act uponits mandate and reinstate these fundamental user rights.”
In February this year, California won significant legal victory that will allow it to finally implement its own tough net neutrality laws in the US state.
It won after the US Justice Department had filed an injunction to stop California implementing its own net neutrality law.
Net neutrality repeal
There had been outage in December 2017 when the republican controlled FCC controversially voted to “roll back” Obama-era net neutrality rules implemented in 2015.
The FCC decision to roll back the 2015 net neutrality laws triggered lawsuits from a number of US states.
A group of 22 state attorneys general and the District of Columbia had asked the appeals court to reinstate the rules, as well as to block the FCC’s effort to pre-empt states from imposing their own rules guaranteeing an open internet.
The Biden administration is not intending to continue the DoJ litigation against US states implementing their own net neutrality laws.