California bill could restore net neutrality

California state senator Scott Wiener yesterday introduced a bill in the California legislature, with co-sponsors who are all Democrats – in the Senate and Assembly. In the event the legislation were to pass, allies in states like New York and New Jersey may also expected to introduce similar bills and a huge chunk of the US population and economy would be subject to regulations that the federal government continues to oppose.

Meanwhile, a tough net neutrality law was passed by Washington State on 5 March (See: Washington becomes first state to approve net neutrality rules).

This is California's second net neutrality bill of the year. The state senate passed a shorter one at the end of January, which will move to the Assembly in late spring. But the sponsor of the bill, senate president Kevin de Leon, will be away to campaign for US Senate seat.

According to Wiener, who wants to merge his legislation with de Leon's, his bill ''covers a wider range of behaviours and uses, a broader range of tools to get ISPs to adhere to net neutrality.''

While Washington State's law covers four pages, Wiener's proposal runs into 11 pages and includes the big-three prohibitions - against blocking and slowing down traffic for consumers, or providing extra bandwidth if content providers like Netflix or Amazon pay extra.

Meanwhile, commentators point out that the internet providers that welcomed the Federal Communications Commission's killing of net neutrality in December may come to regret having gone too far.

They point out that in the place of federal open-internet protections, states across the country are increasingly passing their own laws bringing in regulations that companies like AT&T and Comcast may find harder to comply with than the now-axed Obama-era policy, which barred broadband companies from slowing down or blocking access to websites.