Members of the Assembly Privacy and Consumer Protection Committee voted 8-2 to move SB822 on to its next stop in Sacramento, the Assembly Appropriations Committee, after more than an hour of comment from Internet service providers and community organizations at the Capitol Tuesday.
State Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, the bill’s author, said he supported the effort to move the bill on despite amendments made last week that he said “eviscerated” protections for Internet users, including young, low-income and minority communities with limited Internet access.
In his opening statement to the privacy committee, Wiener said the Internet has evolved into the “wild, wild west” after AT&T purchased Time Warner, which he said opened up the opportunity for Internet service providers to make it harder for consumers to access competitors’ websites.
“Net neutrality is about who gets to pick the winners and the losers of the Internet,” Wiener said. “If the [United States] government won’t lead, which it won’t, then California will.”
Wiener introduced his bill in January, following the Federal Communications Commission’s vote in December to remove 2015 rules that mandated net neutrality practices.
Wiener told the committee he would have loved to pass the bill as it stood in early June, but said it had been “gutted” by the Assembly Communications and Conveyance Committee last week. That hearing was marked by a tense exchange between Wiener and the committee’s chairman, Assemblyman Miguel Santiago, D-Los Angeles.
“The bill, in its current form, no longer protects net neutrality and is not worth passing,” Wiener said in a statement. Wiener added that he was working with Santiago “to restore the protections that the committee removed.”
Wiener warned the privacy committee that he has no intention to pass a “fake” net neutrality bill if he’s unable to restore the bill’s original protections, including prohibiting zero-rating, a practice wherein providers exempt favored websites and apps from data caps; prohibiting blocking, speeding up or slowing down websites; and charging websites unreasonable amounts for access to an Internet service provider’s customers.
“Consumers are not protected, small businesses are not protected and they will get stomped out of existence,” Wiener said. “It is the next generation of Netflix and Google that are going to get destroyed with the lack of net neutrality.”
If the bill maintains its current language and does not get amended according to his recommendations, Wiener said he will withdraw his legislation.
Carolyn McIntyre, president of the California Cable & Telecommunications Association, said her organization could not support the bill because it would subject Internet service providers to “state-by-state patchwork legislation” where companies may be subject to different policies in each state.
Bill Devine, an AT&T vice president, said state officials risked squandering the chance for California to be on the “threshold of the second wave” of the technological revolution. AT&T opposed the bill.
“AT&T supports an open Internet, we do not censor online content and we do not degrade Internet traffic,” Devine said. “SB822 went far beyond the Obama 2015 FCC rules, and we oppose the SB822 that is proposed today.”
Devine called both bill versions, the one passed Tuesday and the one proposed by Wiener in June, “significantly harmful” to consumers and the Internet economy.
Devine told the committee that “zero rating” programs, also described as “free data” programs, are well-liked by young and low-income communities. He said they help such users access the Internet.
But Steven Renderos, the organizing director of the Center for Media Justice in Oakland, said zero-rating programs are discriminatory, specifically to minority and low-income communities who may not be able to afford unlimited data plans, hindering them from accessing all content on the Internet.
“Net neutrality is a civil rights struggle,” Renderos said. “Discrimination of any kind is never good for any community of color.”
Wiener echoed Renderos’ sentiment, stating that zero rating would essentially turn Internet use into a service like cable television, where low-income users may only be able to afford and access a limited number of websites or apps.
He said he hopes to extend negotiations with Santiago and other officials to amend the current version of the bill into a “strong” net neutrality bill.
The committee voted 8-2 to move the bill to the Assembly Appropriations Committee, where officials will have until Aug. 17 to pass it.
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