Obama vs. the FCC Chairman
The president’s statement on net neutrality was bigger than you think.
By Marvin Ammori

Last week, while speaking at a Los Angeles town hall meeting, President Obama reaffirmed his “unequivocal support” for network neutrality. Network neutrality is the principle that phone and cable companies shouldn't create an unequal Web—one with new Internet “slow lanes” for (almost all) websites and special fast lanes sold to billion-dollar giants like Facebook and Apple.

Network neutrality is also something that Obama’s controversial appointee to head the Federal Communications Commission—Tom Wheeler—proposed, in May, to end. That was when Wheeler issued one of American history’s more unpopular legal proposals, which would give cable and phone companies substantial room to discriminate among websites, cut exclusive deals, and to impose new tolls on sites. Since proposing to radically change the Internet status quo, Wheeler has been the target of two viral John Oliver features, has inspired almost 4 million comments to the FCC (a record) nearly unanimously opposed to his proposal, inspired grass-roots organizations and giant companies to unite in a display evoking Lex Luthor and Superman joining forces, and has received criticism for being a former cable lobbyist even by fellow Democrats running in competitive elections. Everyone’s guess for a future presidential candidate—Hillary Clinton—has reiterated her longtime support for network neutrality. And Obama is also distancing himself from the toxic proposal, including in his statement last week.

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Continua qui: http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2014/10/obama_vs_tom_wheeler_the_president_s_statement_on_net_neutrality_was_huge.single.html