Ajit Pai: CA Net Neutrality Is ‘Illegal,’ Law’s Author Fires Back

California last month passed the nation’s toughest state-level net neutrality law, and the Donald Trump-appointed chair of the Federal Communications Commission, Ajit Pai, does not like it at all. At Pai’s urging, the Republican-dominated FCC voted last December to repeal the federal net neutrality rules that had been in effect since June of 2015. As of June 11 this year, the rules were lifted and the United States was without protections against big telecommunications companies strangling online traffic to some sites while giving easy access to others for a fee—or for any reason that the internet service providers wanted. But states have been fighting back, either passing their own net neutrality laws—as California did on August 31—or joining in a federal lawsuit to reinstate the Obama-era net neutrality rules nationwide. The California law—which after more than two weeks has languished without a signature on the desk of Governor Jerry Brown—has drawn Pai’s highest level of anger, however, as he revealed on Friday to a right-wing think-tank in Maine. In his speech to the Maine Heritage Policy Center, Pai slammed SB 822—the California net neutrality bill—as “illegal,” “radical” and “anti-consumer,” according to the Los Angeles Times, and went on to ridicule what he called California’s “nanny-state legislators.” “They have met the enemy, and it is free data,” Pai said—though the lack of net neutrality regulations would allow internet service providers to slow or cut off data arbitrarily, if they choose to do so. Scott Wiener, the San Francisco state senator who is the lead author of SB 822, quickly shot back at Pai over what he called the FCC head’s “potshots” at the California law. “Unlike Pai’s FCC, California isn’t run by the big telecom and cable companies,” Wiener said, as quoted by the tech news site Motherboard. “SB 822 is supported by a broad coalition of consumer groups, groups advocating for low-income people, small and mid-size technology companies, labor unions, and President Obama’s FCC chairman, Tom Wheeler. I’ll take that support over Ajit Pai any day of the week.” In a Sacramento Bee column last week, Center for Media Justice Campaign Director Steven Renderos spelled out what his nonprofit group, which has sent a letter to Brown urging him to sign the bill, sees as the stakes in the net neutrality fight. “It’s no coincidence that as black and brown people have gone online to expose the attacks on their communities, the Federal Communications Commission under President Donald Trump has actively worked against them, including the decision to repeal Obama administration rules to ensure a free and open internet,” Renderos wrote. “Without a free and open Internet, movements such as #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter may never have flourished and made such a dramatic impact. The battle for net neutrality is really a continuation of the age-old fight for our right to dissent.” Net neutrality is also a key issue for the online adult industry. Without the rules in place, porn sites are vulnerable to data throttling blocking as a form of censorship, as well as to ISPs who may require users to pay additional fees for access to adult sites. Photo by Gage Skidmore / Wikimeda Commons