A group of 21 of the internet’s most esteemed pioneers have written an
open letter to the FCC’s Congressional overseers that critiques the
agency’s foolish, self-serving description of how the net works in eye-watering detail.
The signatories including past chairs of ISOC and the IETF, co-inventors
of TCP/IP, the inventor of the web, the founder of the first
search-engine, the inventor of public-key cryptography, the creators of
the world’s most widely used cryptographic systems, hypertext pioneers,
and the co-founder of Apple, among many others.
The pioneers point out that they provided the FCC with a detailed,
unimpeachable technical correction to its memo on how the internet
works, and that the FCC – an expert agency legally obliged to consider
expert testimony – failed to act on that correction.
The FCC has ignored 23,000,000 public comments endorsing net neutrality
on the grounds that they don’t represent the “expert feedback” it is
obliged to consider. But the FCC also ignores feedback from the
world’s leading experts when it doesn’t suit the telcoms companies the
agency is supposed to be regulating.
The pioneers call on Congress to order the FCC to cancel its vote on
killing net neutrality and to only hold such a vote after observing the
normal order, with hearings, a functional comment system, and a
fairminded, reasonable consideration of expert feedback, as befits an
expert agency.
