Anna-Maria Kovacs: “Why Shelter the Internet Edge Providers?” (CED Magazine)

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The morning of May 16, 2018, in advance of the Senate vote on the resolution under the Congressional Review Act to overturn the FCC’s 2017 Restoring Internet Freedom order, CED Magazine published an op-ed by Visiting Senior Policy Scholar Anna-Maria Kovacs, “Why Shelter the Internet Edge Providers?”

The op-ed argues that far from accomplishing the goal of net neutrality— i.e., ensuring that a legal communication initiated by an American will not be blocked, throttled, or disadvantaged to a platform’s profit until it reaches its ultimate intended recipients—the current resolution would ensure that edge providers would have the right to block, throttle, prioritize for pay, and interfere with competitors. What Americans need is a strong set of rules that applies all through the Internet, to both ISPs and edge providers, not a resolution that shelters the edge giants’ special interests indefinitely. Americans need Congress to finally deal with the Internet as a new and complex ecosystem that presents challenging issues that cannot be solved by applying 1934 rules to a few of the relevant participants. It is time for legislation that protects all Americans throughout the Internet.

Read the op-ed on CED Magazine‘s website (new window).