California’s Net Neutrality Plan Adds Exceptions Sought by the Telecom Industry
California’s effort to revive strict net neutrality rules for the Internet hit a roadblock on Wednesday. The legislative proposal to reinstate--at least for California residents--the 2015 federal online anti-discrimination protections was amended to add multiple exceptions that Internet service providers had been seeking.
The California bill was taken up by the state Assembly’s Committee on Communications and Conveyance on Wednesday afternoon. At that point, it was amended to add exceptions to the net neutrality protections. For example, ISPs would be allowed to charge fees to websites in some cases, slow the traffic of specific categories of apps, and exempt their own content from monthly data caps, a practice known as “zero rating.” The bill could face further changes as it continues to move through the legislative process.
Until Wednesday’s changes, California’s net neutrality proposal was considered potentially the strongest in the nation. Washington state passed a law in March that closely followed the prior federal rules adopted during the Obama administration which barred ISPs from blocking or throttling online content and prohibiting prioritizing some content over others for money. Montana issued an executive order in January requiring Internet service providers with state contracts to abide by similar rules. A large group of states are also suing the Trump administration’s Federal Communications Commission over the decision to rescind the rules last December.
Get Data Sheet, Fortune’s technology newsletter.
Net neutrality proponents expressed their dismay at Wednesday’s changes to the California proposal, known as Senate Bill 822.
"The level of corruption we just witnessed literally makes me sick to my stomach," Evan Greer, deputy director of Fight for the Future, said in a statement. “Californians should rise up and demand that at their Assembly members represent them. The actions of this committee today are an attack not just on net neutrality, but on our democracy."
Assemblyman Miguel Santiago, who chairs the committee, issued a statement that didn’t address the amendment.
“California should once again stand as a back-stop of ‘the resistance’ by beating back both the Trump's Administration and the billion-dollar corporations he's trying to protect,” he wrote. “Because of that, I stand firm in recommending the 2015 Obama FCC rules on net neutrality as they were included in Senate Bill 822 this morning."
The goal of the rules is to protect consumers who may want to access content via the Internet from , Spotify , or another provider without allowing their ISP, such as or to block or charge more for reaching those services.
See original article on Fortune.com
More from Fortune.com
