Communications

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai is planning to inspect Hurricane Harvey damage in Texas starting on Sept. 5, wrapped into a visit to the state that he already had planned for early September. He also is scheduled to speak on net neutrality at an event on Sept. 7 in Irving, Texas, hosted by the Institute for Policy Innovation.

IPI commends Sens. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and Mike Lee, R-Utah, for introducing the ECPA Modernization Act of 2017, which fixes a glaring hole in the Fourth Amendment privacy protections Americans should enjoy on their electronic data.

In comments filed today, IPI applauded the FCC’s Restoring Internet Freedom rulemaking, especially the agency’s reversal on the Wheeler FCC’s “most unfortunate and unnecessary error”-- the 2015 mistake of reclassifying broadband as a Title II common carrier communications service.

Mr. Pai’s approach will ensure America’s digital economy continues to thrive.

It’s going to be very difficult for opponents of reversing Title II to make sound legal arguments against the reset, since they spent years making the case that the FCC had precisely the authority to reclassify broadband as it saw fit.

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai is undertaking the important work of setting Internet policy back on its well-established framework of light touch federal regulation by overturning the Obama administration’s ill-advised reclassification of broadband under Title II.

The Institute for Policy Innovation (IPI) supports the closing of the FCC’s business data services proceeding, and thus supports a vote to terminate the proceeding at the Commission’s April 20^th meeting.

Free-market oriented groups urged the FCC to reverse its ISP privacy rules, approved in October. The FCC posted thousands of public comments this week on the rules, many of them urging the agency to better align its rules with those of the FTC.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) should reconsider and withdraw its 2016 Privacy Order as an early step in undoing the many mistakes and overreaches made by the agency under its previous Chairman, and allow the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to take the lead over Internet privacy, said Institute for Policy Innovation (IPI) president Tom Giovanetti.