Donald Trump transition team appoints two anti-net neutrality advocates

The future of net neutrality seems to be in jeopardy. We saw this coming, didn’t we? Many had expressed concerns over weakened net neutrality rules if Trump wins. And now the unexpected has happened. There is now fear of reversal of the 2015 policy that helped introduce net neutrality. In line with the rumours earlier, Jeffrey Eisenach, a longtime critic of FCC regulation, has been roped into Trump’s presidential transition team. According to a report by Forbes, President-elect Donald Trump has appointed Jeffrey Eisenach and Mark Jamison, two anti-net neutrality advocates to lead the FCC transition team. Trump had hired Eisenach back in October to help create his telecoms policies and also plans for the FCC, adds the report. He has worked for FCC transition team earlier under President Reagan and George W. Bush. During Obama’s term, FCC had put forth regulations for net neutrality. The 2015 Open Internet Order meant that service providers cannot discriminate against different types of content and cannot create fast lanes by making you pay extra. Back home too, we have seen the after effects as Internet providers were against net neutrality, while most tech companies and netizens firmly stood supporting it. However, in the US, it was supported by tech giants, or seemed to have changed their stance in India (read Facebook). “Under Trump, the FCC could open a new rulemaking that would reverse its 2015 decision to reclassify the internet as a utility. This would undermine the FCC’s net neutrality rules that prohibit internet providers from speeding up or slowing down access to certain websites and other discriminatory practices,” Re/code had earlier said. FCC is also believed to be working on set-top box regulation that hasn’t gone as planned. Now, under Trump, it is quite possible that the enforcement of app-based rollout of pay TV feeds could be thrown out of the window altogether. https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/532608358508167168 Back in 2014, Eisenach had called net neutrality “crony capitalism pure and simple” while Jamison wrote in a paper this year that ’net neutrality is hindering the very innovations it is supposed to protect, creating undue scrutiny and threatening bans of pro-consumer services’. Is it time for open Internet activists and regulatory bodies to brace themselves for a bigger battle ahead?