Los pol\u00edticos afines a la industria no se detendr\u00e1n ante nada para rescatar a sus amos corporativos, incluso si eso significa ignorar la voluntad del p\u00fablico estadounidense.<\/p>
On Wednesday, every Republican on the House Appropriations Committee (and one Democrat, Texas Rep. Henry Cuellar) voted to block implementation of the FCC's historic net neutrality rules. Those rules, which went into effect last Friday, keep the Internet free and open for all Americans. The Internet is the town square of 21st-century democracy, not a playground for deep-pocketed corporations, and the rules ensure that it will stay that way.<\/p>
Tucked more than 100 pages into the bill is a rider that hamstrings the agency’s ability to \"implement, administer, or enforce\" any of those rules until (and this is a big until) pending net neutrality litigation against the FCC is resolved. The rider's language, as Representative Jose Serrano, D-NY, noted, throws the door wide open for corporate lawyers to stall implementation of the FCC's rules, possibly indefinitely.<\/p>
Serrano said that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit refused last week to delay implementation of the FCC's rules. Decisions on whether the rules should stand should come from the judicial system, Serrano argued; the rider just gave unhappy Republicans a way to circumvent the judicial process.<\/p>
Common Cause agrees. The FCC’s Open Internet rules reflect the views of more than 4 million Americans who submitted comments to the agency. The Court of Appeals had a chance to intervene but chose not to. It's not Congress’s job to undercut the judicial branch or defy the will of the public, but the committee’s vote does just that.<\/p>
\u201cLa C\u00e1mara del Pueblo deber\u00eda representar la voluntad del pueblo\u201d, dijo Michael Copps, asesor especial de Common Cause y ex comisionado de la FCC. \u201cEl voto mayoritario del comit\u00e9 en contra de la Internet Abierta est\u00e1 totalmente fuera de sinton\u00eda con los millones de personas que se comunicaron con la FCC para exigir \u2013y ganar\u2013 una competencia hist\u00f3rica en l\u00ednea y garant\u00edas de libertad de expresi\u00f3n\u201d.<\/p>
Los estadounidenses quieren que Internet siga siendo libre y abierta. La mayor\u00eda del Comit\u00e9 de Asignaciones Presupuestarias ha demostrado lo desconectada que est\u00e1 de la naci\u00f3n.<\/p>