The Federal Communications Commission on Thursday published the final rule registering the repeal of current net neutrality laws, which is now set to come into effect on April 23rd, 2018. Still, the formal step opens the door for advocacy groups to begin the legal fight against the repeal.
The FCC published the new order in the Federal Register, a requisite that allows for groups to file legal challenges against an order. Web browser Mozilla Corp and Vimeo Inc., a video-sharing platform, re-filed lawsuits on Thursday challenging the landmark repeal, Reuters reports. Pushback also came from advocacy groups, such as the American Civil Liberties Union, and from a number of state attorneys general, who formed a coalition to re-file lawsuits against the repeal.
“The FCC may have made its illegal rollback of net neutrality official, but this fight is just getting started,” New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman tweeted on Thursday.
More than 20 state attorneys general, led by Schneiderman, said they plan to refile a legal challenge to the repeal as early as Thursday, according to Reuters. “Repealing net neutrality will allow internet service providers to put corporate profits before consumers by controlling what we see, do and say online. It’s Big Telecom vs. the American people,” Schneiderman wrote in another tweet on Thursday.
The new order “requires internet service providers to disclose information about their network management practices, performance characteristics, and commercial terms of service” to “protect the openness of the internet” through transparency. The Republican-majority FCC voted in December to repeal the net neutrality rules passed by the Obama administration in 2015.
