Google, Netflix, Amazon Join Legal Push Restore Net Neutrality

SACRAMENTO, Calif.—As the state of California prepares for a potentially landmark vote to put the state’s own net neutrality regulations in place, on Monday a coalition of some of the biggest corporate names on the internet leaped into a lawsuit brought by 22 states and the District of Columbia to restore the open internet rules nationwide. Net neutrality rules guarantee that internet service providers treat all online traffic equally, and do not allow traffic from some sites—generally those that can pay a premium fee—access to the internet’s highest data speeds, while slowing, or “throttling,” traffic from other sites. But the Republican-controlled Federal Communications Commission repealed the Obama-era rules as of June.  The coalition of internet companies that filed a brief in favor of bringing back the rules with a federal court in Washington D.C. Monday includes Google (through its parent company Alphabet), Amazon, Facebook, and others, according to a CNet report.  Netflix, Twitter, Microsoft and Uber are also members of the coalition that filed the brief, according to Reuters. The internet giants slammed the FCC’s repeal of net neutrality rules as “unreasoned and unreasonable,” adding that the commission’s decision was based on “flawed analysis [that] runs counter to the record and departs from the [FCC’s] previous factual findings without explanation.” The Writers Guild of America West, the union that represents most Hollywood film and television scriptwriters, also joined with the internet giants in filing the brief, according to Deadline.com, saying in a statement that the FCC’s repeal of the rules left “powerful Internet providers free to decide what content reaches viewers and how, harming content creators and consumers alike.” The brief was filed on the same day that the California State Assembly prepared to take up a net neutrality bill that would impose the internet fairness rules on telecom companies that provide internet access within the nation’s most populous state. The California bill goes beyond the 2015 net neutrality rules that have since been repealed by the FCC, The Los Angeles Times reports, even largely banning “zero rating” plans which allow the big ISPs to impose data limit caps on consumers but to exempt their own data from those limits, in effect granting preferential treatment to themselves. But the large internet companies are fighting against passage of the bill by the California Assembly. “We believe this bill is anti-competitive and anti-consumer, and is surely going to be challenged,” AT&T lobbyist Bill Devine told The Times. Photo By Gisela Giardino/Wikimedia Commons