Trump’s new FCC chief is Ajit Pai, and he wants to destroy net neutrality – The Verge (Jan 23, 2017)

It’s the nature of the beast that all regulatory appointments quickly get seen through the very narrow lens of a single issue that’s important to the tech industry, and that’s the case here. Ajit Pai is, as is the case with the rest of the FCC commissioners, a smart guy with a set of nuanced views on a variety of complex subjects. Yes, he’s clearly going to do what he can to overturn the FCC’s net neutrality rulings, but his time at the FCC will be about far more than that. On net neutrality, how you feel about this appointment will depend on how you feel about net neutrality – not just whether you’re in favor of it in a vague, general sense, but the specifics of what you think it should cover. The reality is that there has never been much danger of the major US broadband providers doing some of the things basic NN regulations would prevent even in the absence of regulation. But there are NN purists who insist that any unequal treatment of traffic is unacceptable, and they likely will be disappointed by what happens under a Pai Commission – AT&T’s preferential treatment of DirecTV content, for example, will definitely be just fine with the incoming FCC. On the other hand, I don’t think we’ll see any carriers blocking competing content or anything else along those lines even if the net neutrality rules are thrown out.

via Trump’s new FCC chief is Ajit Pai, and he wants to destroy net neutrality – The Verge

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