 And Ajit Pai, this means war. We're not going to lie down and take it. We will fight you, Ajit. Long time viewers of the channel know that I have been talking about the importance of net neutrality since 2017. 2017, it's been a very long time. And after six years of covering this story fairly regularly and then providing you with updates time and again, I'm happy to report that we are actually on the cusp of a major victory. In fact, we're gonna win the war. We've won battles here and there, but we're about to take home the W entirely because as the New York Times reports, the Biden administration plans to bring back open internet rules that were enacted during the Obama administration and then repealed by the Trump administration. In a speech on Tuesday, Jessica Rosenwurzel, chairwoman of the Federal Communications Commission declared that the repeal in 2017 put the FCC on the wrong side of history, the wrong side of the law and the wrong side of the public. In other words, Ajit Pai's pro-corporate legacy is going to be repealed in its entirety. This is very good news to say the least. And we haven't seen the actual proposal from Rosenwurzel yet, but this is a long time proponent of net neutrality. She supported it as an FCC commissioner under the Obama administration. And during Ajit Pai's reign of terror, she fought against him. But now she's gonna be able to cook up her own repeal of the repeal of net neutrality. And I am confident that whatever she produces, it's gonna be fantastic. So I'm not worried about that. But if you're wondering why it took so long, well it's because the FCC has been deadlocked with two Republicans and two Democrats. So that means anything that Jessica Rosenwurzel comes up with, well, there's gonna be a tie and nothing will get through. And on top of that, Senate Republicans have obstructed Biden's nominee for over a year. In fact, Biden's pro-net neutrality nominee, Gigi Sohn, was smeared in an astroturfed campaign, likely funded by internet service providers. And Republican senators also smeared her as a woke radical leftist. And unfortunately it worked. Now, once Joe Manchin announced that he would be siding with Republicans and voting against her, she realized that she effectively had no path towards confirmation and chose to withdraw her nomination. But on September 7th, we finally made some progress because Biden's new nominee, Anna Gomez, was confirmed as FCC commissioner. Meaning that Democrats now had a majority on the FCC to put forth policies that they can actually vote on and enact. Now, Anna Gomez has worked in both the public and private sector, and she was formerly a telecom attorney, much like a Jied Pi. But I think that her being from within the industry and also working in the public sector, she's worked with the FCC as well, probably eased Republican's fears and they voted for her. But unlike a Jied Pi, she actually does support net neutrality and all that matters is that she's gonna be that vote that we need to bring back net neutrality. And she is. And with her confirmation, the FCC is now in a position to roll back everything that a Jied Pi did. Now it's been a while since I've talked about net neutrality. So I do wanna take some time to explain what that means for people who are new to this issue because this is something that is very heavily propagandized and it's difficult to find trustworthy sources on this issue because the internet service providers have so much at stake and they spread so much disinformation to confuse people, but net neutrality for those unaware is a good thing. It is something that we need. Net neutrality requires internet service providers like Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T to treat all web traffic equally, which means that Verizon, for example, can't throttle traffic to Netflix in order to get people to use their streaming service instead. It could potentially harm competition, but also it means that internet service providers aren't able to carve up the internet. They have to offer the entire internet to customers and this image right here demonstrates what the internet could look like where ISPs pitch lower cost internet options like a social media package, but don't give people access to other options unless they pay like entertainment. So they couldn't stream Netflix, for example. And the ultimate goal here was to basically turn the internet into cable TV, right? So they can just charge people more. It was a scam. It was all about internet service provider greed. And under Trump's FCC, under the leadership of a GPI, they made that legal. They made it so these internet service providers could do that. And with any regulatory changes, there's always a required period beforehand where the public is allowed to weigh in and comment on the changes, but the process under a GPI was deeply corrupt. The FCC's comment system was flooded with millions of fake comments and we later found out that these comments were being funded by broadband companies themselves who were also simultaneously heavily lobbying in favor of the repeal of net neutrality. And to make matters worse, a GPI's repeal of net neutrality tried to preempt state laws on the subject, which meant that if Utah, for example, tried to pass its own net neutrality law in defiance of the FCC, well, that law would be illegal automatically because that's what a GPI's repeal of net neutrality included. This was supported by state senators like Ted Cruz who wrote op-eds in favor of this. And at the same time, he also took a lot of money from internet service providers. But thankfully, a court struck down that provision, which was very, very bad news for internet service providers because that was the core of their repeal of net neutrality because state after state after state ended up passing their own net neutrality laws, states like Oregon, Washington, California, New York and others. And some of these states had net neutrality protections that were arguably stronger than the ones that were introduced under the Obama administration. And these state laws totally undermine the national net neutrality repeal put in place by the Trump administration because if you have all of these states, the most populous states like California and New York undermining the FCC with this appeal, well, obviously that's bad news for ISPs. It's gonna make it much more difficult for them to roll out these draconian changes that they initially planned to. But that's not to say that their repeal of net neutrality hasn't been damaging because it has. One example is the Santa Clara Fire Department in California being literally throttled by Verizon during a firefight until they paid the company double. And once they paid, the throttling was lifted, although not immediately. Now, Verizon claims that it was just a mistake and had nothing to do with net neutrality even though they've lobbied against it for years. But the Santa Clara Fire Department, on the other hand, wasn't buying it. And they then submitted that incident as evidence in a lawsuit against the FCC as a reason to reinstate net neutrality at the national level. But needless to say, California later passed their own net neutrality law once the preemption rule was struck down because, I mean, Verizon's greed literally endangered public safety. A lot of us anticipated these ISPs just carving up the internet. Nobody thought that they would do something that evil where they literally throttle firefighters during a firefight. And for those of you unaware, yes, they do need the internet so they can coordinate during large firefights. So this actually inhibited their ability to fight fires. So it goes to show you that net neutrality was far more important than any of us had imagined even. But now net neutrality is coming back. It's gonna return to all 50 states and I promise you internet service providers are not gonna be happy about this. And as a result, expect to see a major, major disinformation campaign, especially during that public comment period because if the ISPs spent millions funding tons of fake comments, then imagine what they're going to do when net neutrality is coming back. So we need to be prepared. And Evan Greer of Battle for the Net writes, very shortly we will update battleforthenet.com to make it super easy for ordinary internet users to submit official net neutrality comments to the FCC docket. We know the phony opposition and telecom lobbying is incoming. Time to make our voices heard again. And they are exactly correct. So even though we are on the cusp of victory, we can't give up and get complacent. We have to be very cognizant of the fact that there's gonna be some manipulation. There's gonna be a lot of propaganda, particularly from Fox News and Republican senators, some Democratic Party senators like Joe Manchin in particular who are funded by ISPs. But I'm gonna link you to the battle for the net website down below so you can also submit your own comment. And I would highly encourage you to do that. I think that we have to be active to make sure that we get these protections that we fought for now for years. And I would highly encourage you to follow battleforthenet because this is one of the best organizations when it comes to net neutrality and just internet openness in general. But I also wanna read you this statement by Demand Progress in full because I think that they put it best. And it's a really great summary if you wanna share this with your friends. Quote, we are thrilled that the FCC will finally be able to undo the damage done during the Trump administration under FCC, Chara G Pie and restore net neutrality. We applaud chair Jessica Rosenwurzel for recognizing the importance of strong open internet protections and her immediate use of the newly full commission to restore the agency's authority to oversee broadband providers under Title II. Giant corporations and their lobbyists blocked President Biden from filling the final FCC seat for more than two years. And they will try every trick to block or delay the agency from restoring net neutrality now. The commission must remain resolute and fully restore free and open internet protections to ensure broadband service providers like Comcast and Verizon treat all content equally. This means providers cannot censor content, create fast lanes for their own products, throttle traffic or block access to their competitors. American's internet experience should not be at the whims of corporate executives whose primary concerns are the pockets of their stakeholders in the corporation's bottom line. Very well said. So it's not over yet, obviously. We're going to have to strongly push back against anti-net neutrality talking points that we see from Republican politicians, right wing griptors and others, but make no mistake about it. This is a very, very positive move. And if you care about freedom on the internet, if you care about the internet being open for everyone and to everyone, then this is a really good day for you.