Senator Marco Rubio's Letter Regarding Net Neutrality

Dear Ms. Tick,

Thank you for contacting me to express your thoughts on the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC) attempts to regulate the  Internet,commonly referred to as "net neutrality." I appreciate hearing from you.

Since its inception, the Internet has flourished with minimal government involvement and has revolutionized our ability to communicate and conduct commerce. As an engine of economic growth, it has provided businesses with the ability to compete in the global marketplace. Continued development of the Internet and modern telecommunications, free of government interference, is integral to American innovation.

However, in 2010, the FCC adopted its "Open Internet Order," which would establish federal regulations governing network management practices for broadband Internet service providers. Fortunately, a U.S. appeals court for the District of Columbia Circuit struck down the order citing the Commission's prior decision to classify broadband as an information service. The Communications Act expressly prohibits the FCC from regulating broadband providers under this classification. 

In an effort to circumvent the appeals court decision, on May 15, 2014, the FCC approved a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) aimed at adopting new rules to replace those struck down by the appeals court. The NPRM also seeks public comment on whether the agency should reclassify broadband as a communications utility under Title II of the Communications Act. The uncertain and misguided authority that comes with reclassifying broadband must be addressed by Congress, not by five unelected bureaucrats at the FCC. That is why updating the outdated Communications Act, which passed in 1996, should be a top priority and would provide clarity to the FCC's role in the modern communications landscape.

If we've learned anything about the Internet over the years, it's the enormous power it has to give people economic opportunity. Please know, as a member of the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, I remain committed to ensuring the Internet remains free of burdensome regulations. Thank you again for contacting me with your concerns.  

Sincerely,

Marco Rubio
United States Senator 

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Open Access Movement

On Yahoo News - by Virginia Hefferman 1/13/2013
 
"Aaron Swartz was a hacker-activist and a committed liberator of information. Facing federal charges, a possible sentence of 35 years in prison and a $1 million fine, for downloading subscription-only academic papers with the intent to distribute them, Swartz hanged himself in his apartment in Brooklyn on Friday. He was 26."
 
R.I.P. Aaron Swartz. 
 
 Guerrilla Open Access Manifesto.
 
Information is power. But like all power, there are those who want to keep it for themselves. The world’s entire scientific and cultural heritage, published over centuries in books and journals, is increasingly being digitized and locked up by a handful of private corporations. Want to read the papers featuring the most famous results of the sciences? You’ll need to send enormous amounts to publishers like Reed Elsevier.
 
There are those struggling to change this. The Open Access Movement has fought valiantly to ensure that scientists do not sign their copyrights away but instead ensure their work is published on the Internet, under terms that allow anyone to access it. But even under the best scenarios, their work will only apply to things published in the future. Everything up until now will have been lost.
 
That is too high a price to pay. Forcing academics to pay money to read the work of their colleagues? Scanning entire libraries but only allowing the folks at Google to read them? Providing scientific articles to those at elite universities in the First World, but not to children in the Global South? It’s outrageous and unacceptable.
 
“I agree,” many say, “but what can we do? The companies hold the copyrights, they make enormous amounts of money by charging for access, and it’s perfectly legal — there’s nothing we can do to stop them.” But there is something we can, something that’s already being done: we can fight back.
 
Those with access to these resources — students, librarians, scientists — you have been given a privilege. You get to feed at this banquet of knowledge while the rest of the world is locked out. But you need not — indeed, morally, you cannot — keep this privilege for yourselves. You have a duty to share it with the world. And you have: trading passwords with colleagues, filling download requests for friends.
 
Meanwhile, those who have been locked out are not standing idly by. You have been sneaking through holes and climbing over fences, liberating the information locked up by the publishers and sharing them with your friends.
 
But all of this action goes on in the dark, hidden underground. It’s called stealing or piracy, as if sharing a wealth of knowledge were the moral equivalent of plundering a ship and murdering its crew. But sharing isn’t immoral — it’s a moral imperative. Only those blinded by greed would refuse to let a friend make a copy.
 
Large corporations, of course, are blinded by greed. The laws under which they operate require it — their shareholders would revolt at anything less. And the politicians they have bought off back them, passing laws giving them the exclusive power to decide who can make copies.
 
There is no justice in following unjust laws. It’s time to come into the light and, in the grand tradition of civil disobedience, declare our opposition to this private theft of public culture.
 
We need to take information, wherever it is stored, make our copies and share them with the world. We need to take stuff that's out of copyright and add it to the archive. We need to buy secret databases and put them on the Web. We need to download scientific journals and upload them to file sharing networks. We need to fight for Guerilla Open Access.
 
With enough of us, around the world, we’ll not just send a strong message opposing the privatization of knowledge — we’ll make it a thing of the past. Will you join us?
 
Aaron Swartz
July 2008, Eremo, Italy