WASHINGTON — The Federal Communications Commission voted 3-2 on Thursday to move forward with
a set of proposed rules aimed at guaranteeing an open Internet, prohibiting high-speed Internet service providers from blocking or discriminating against legal content flowing through their pipes.
While the plan is meant to prevent data from being knowingly slowed by Internet providers, it would allow content providers to pay for a guaranteed fast lane of service. Some opponents of the plan argue that allowing some content to be sent along a fast lane would essentially discriminate against content not sent along that lane.
Three Democratic commissioners on the five-member panel, including the chairman, Tom Wheeler, voted in favor of opening the plan to public comment. The plan will be open for comment for four months, beginning immediately.
The two Republicans who voted against the plan said that it exceeded the agency’s legal authority, that there had been no evidence of actual harm or deviation from net neutrality principles, and that elected members of Congress should decide the issue, not regulatory appointees.
