Last Updated on September 5, 2017, 6:12 pm ET
Last week, ARL submitted two sets of reply comments to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) urging the Commission to maintain strong protections for net neutrality. ARL joined with eight other higher education associations to file reply comments noting that an open Internet is fundamental to the service missions of institutions of higher education and libraries, that Title II provides a strong legal basis to protect and preserve an open Internet, while also pointing to possible protections the FCC could enact under Section 706. Additionally, ARL submitted individual reply comments that highlight the importance of net neutrality to ARL institutions, urges the FCC to maintain protections under Title II (noting that it is the clearest path to regulatory certainty), and noting the importance of an open Internet to the First Amendment.
ARL’s reply comments note that while ensuring strong net neutrality rules consistent with joint principles released by library and higher education groups are the primary concern,
…if the FCC reclassifies, the resulting conundrum is this: if the FCC attempts to adopt strong rules, the stronger they are the more judicially-vulnerable they are. If the FCC responds to this appellate vulnerability and adopts relatively weak rules, it shifts the risk to consumers, exposing them to abusive ISP practices.
An open Internet is critical to the functioning of the Internet today, including for the cutting-edge research, platforms, innovations and collaboration that takes place at ARL members. In addition to several examples of the importance of an open Internet to ARL’s work and services included in the reply comments, additional examples have been collected on this page. Net neutrality enables libraries to provide access to vast troves of data, facilitate discovery, preserve and share culture and information, provide interactive connected spaces and classrooms, facilitate data management, offer online courses, and provide international, interconnected wifi access.
Read ARL’s press release here.
