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Weekly News Digest
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January 16, 2025 — In addition to this week's NewsBreaks article and the monthly NewsLink Spotlight, Information Today, Inc. (ITI) offers Weekly News Digests that feature recent product news and company announcements. Watch for additional coverage to appear in the next print issue of Information Today.
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Perspectives on the (Likely) End of the Net Neutrality Debate
“A federal appeals court struck down the Federal Communications Commission’s net neutrality rules, ending a 20-year push to regulate internet service providers like a public utility,” NPR reports. “A U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in Cincinnati on [Jan. 2] ruled that the FCC did not have legal authority to reinstate the landmark net neutrality rules. … Democrats [are] on the side of so-called net neutrality in an effort to hold ISPs more accountable for providing fast, safe and reliable internet for all. … [T]he FCC aimed to make ISPs accountable for outages, require more robust network security, protect fast speeds, and require greater protections for consumer data.”“In their decision, the judges noted that different administrations have gone back and forth on the issue,” the BBC notes. “But they said the court no longer had to give ‘deference’ to the FCC’s reading of the law, pointing to a recent Supreme Court decision that limits the authority of federal agencies to interpret laws, a decision that critics expect will be used to weaken regulation in the years ahead.” Yahoo! Finance looks at how the appeals court ruling ties into the recent Loper Bright Enterprises v. U.S. Secretary of Commerce decision, stating, “The net neutrality case offers the latest example of how the Supreme Court’s landmark 2024 Loper Bright ruling could upend actions taken by all sorts of agencies across Washington, D.C.” The Register says: At the heart of this matter is that the FCC, under the Biden and Obama administrations, believed it was able to interpret existing US telecommunications law to issue its net neutrality rule, which the courts would have to respect. Opponents argued the regulator did not have that authority, that it was an overreach of power, and that the Loper Bright ruling means the FCC’s reading of the law can be overridden by judges. Investopedia offers a good explainer on the history of net neutrality and potential winners and losers when there’s no regulation of ISPs. Forbes provides four “major economic and legal policy implications [from the decision] that may well interest the Trump Administration.” Scientific American interviewed David Choffnes, director of the Cybersecurity and Privacy Institute at Northeastern University: “‘We can always keep collecting data, keep observing what’s happening, go to our representatives, tell them that this matters and find a solution,’ he says. For a start, Choffnes and some of his colleagues have created an app named Wehe, which anyone can download to test for net neutrality breaches. It has been used to perform more than 2.5 million tests since 2017.” SFGATE.com reports on Jan. 13 that “with the decision, California notched a victory in its fight with the GOP. The regulatory rollback won’t touch the Golden State, because it has the ‘gold standard’ for state net neutrality laws. … Trump’s first administration sued to block the California law but couldn’t knock it off the books before President Joe Biden took office. A coalition of industry groups tried next, but was stymied in 2022 by an appeals court.” SFGATE.com continues, “Industry groups’ and conservatives’ excitement over the ruling is an early signal of what’s to come in Trump’s second presidency, according to Chris Witteman, formerly senior counsel for the California Public Utilities Commission. … ‘It’s a celebration for them, because it’s massive deregulation,’ Witteman said. ‘... If you want to put this in the larger context, we’re moving to an era where the administrative state will not function anymore. And this is what they want.’”
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Brandi Scardilli
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