FCC Vote Tomorrow Will Weigh the Public Interest Against Corporate Interests

Statement of Michael Copps former FCC Commissioner & Common Cause Special Advisor

This may well be the last gasp of the open internet, as big telecom’s majority at the FCC decrees instead the Gate-keeper’s Internet—a shadowy world of monopoly, commercialism, and conspiracy in restraint of democracy that totally subverts the promise of what might have been. 

Nationwide voters are rising up against the unjust, immoral, and unseemly role of corporate money in our political system. They are sick and tired of the naked pay-to-play corporatism on display in tomorrow’s vote. The voters will long remember this, and the majority will surely regret shuttering the open internet. 

There is still time to pull back from the precipice but unfortunately it is hard to imagine Ajit Pai reversing course and voting in the public’s interest on net neutrality. The will of the American people has been ignored to date for the benefit of deep-pocketed special interests.