Verizon Policy Statement on Net Neutrality

Wed Mar 11 01:51:51 UTC 2015

> On Mar 10, 2015, at 06:21 , Kelly Setzer <Kelly.Setzer at wnco.com> wrote:
> 
> Many other organizations who were innovating will be affected by the new
> rules.  Many of those organizations are very small and cannot afford the
> army of lawyers that Verizon can.

Such as? Can you provide any actual examples of harmful effects or are you just ranting because you don’t like government involvement?

> And, no, I do not think recent regulatory efforts have been suitably
> cautious.  Enacting unpublished rules violates the spirit and history of
> open design, open discussion, and open standards that have made the
> Internet what it is today.

The rules are not unpublished, nor will they be unpublished when they are enacted. It’s true that the R&O isn’t out yet, but the actual rules (47CFR8) are published. Nothing takes effect until the R&O is published and due process is followed.

I can accept that there may not have been sufficient caution, but your claim that the current process violates the spirit and history of open design, open discussion, and open standards simply does not apply. The FCC followed the NPRM process and accepted a wide variety of public comment (and actually seems to have listened to the public comment in this case). As near as I can tell, they bent over backwards to be far more inclusive in the process than is historically normal in the FCC NPRM process.

I get that you don’t like the outcome, but I feel that your criticisms of the process reflect more of a lack of understanding of the normal federal rulemaking process than any substantive failure of that process.

Owen