Earlier this week the California State Senate approved a new bill that would impost net neutrality restrictions on Internet Service Providers (ISPs), despite the FCC’s recent repeal of federal net neutrality laws.
Several states are fighting against the FCC’s decision, despite their attempts to include a provision to preempt state and municipal governments from enforcing net neutrality at a local level.
Montana and New York were the first states, signing executive orders to enforce net neutrality. Now California has moved forward.
21 states and the District of Columbia are suing the FCC in an attempt to reverse their decision to repeal net neutrality. States and local governments that choose to enforce net neutrality rules at the state or local level will most likely be challenged in court.
California’s bill, SB-460 proposed by Sen. Kevin de León, passed with a vote of 21-12. It will not move to the State Assembly. Prospects look good for its passage: all 21 votes for the bill were from Democrats, who heavily outweigh Republicans in the State Assembly.
The bill would prohibit ISPs from “Blocking lawful content, applications, services, or non-harmful devices,” from throttling and “paid prioritization, or providing preferential treatment of some Internet traffic to any Internet customer,” from interfering with “a customer’s ability to select, access, and use broadband Internet access service or lawful Internet content, applications, services, or devices of the customer’s choice, or an edge provider’s ability to make lawful content, applications, services, or devices available to a customer,” and forbids them from using deceptive or misleading marketing practices “that misrepresent the treatment of Internet traffic or content to its customers.”
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