Larry Downes: “Industry Groups Beg Congress, FCC To Restore Scrambled Internet Privacy Rules” (Forbes)

Forbes

Late last week, a diverse coalition of advertising trade groups, broadband providers and advocacy groups across the political spectrum moved to reverse the FCC’s last-minute effort to radically alter the flow of consumer information, which would have reversed the “notice and choice” model for ad-based services that constitutes the core of the commercial Internet. The FCC’s privacy order, adopted a few days before the November election, was one of several late efforts by the Obama administration to rewrite long-standing pillars of Internet governance, many of which flowed from the Commission’s controversial decision two years ago to “reclassify” broadband as a public utility subject to thousands of regulations written for the former Bell monopoly in the 1930’s.