The majority of Americans do not want the government regulating the internet like a public utility, according to a new survey from the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI). Only one in three support the idea, as the Federal Communications Commission prepares to vote on new rules next week.
PPI also found that 74 percent don’t know what “net neutrality” means, and only 1 in 10 have “positive feelings” about it. As the debate has come to center around regulating the internet under Title II of the Communications Act, the FCC’s proposal is often conflated with “net neutrality” in general, when in fact many net neutrality advocates oppose Title II regulation.
79 percent want the FCC to disclose the text of their proposed rules before they vote. Current FCC policy keeps the exact wording of the rules under wraps until after the vote. Some commissioners have called for this to change, while Republican commissioner Ajit Pai drummed up outrage by tweeting a picture of the hefty regulations:
Here is President Obama’s 332-page plan to regulate the Internet. I wish the public could see what’s inside. pic.twitter.com/bwwAsk8ZiB
— Ajit Pai (@AjitPaiFCC) February 6, 2015
“These findings suggest that the FCC’s bid to impose outdated telephone regulations on the Internet is driven more by professional activists than by the public, which seems instinctively to resist the idea,” PPI President Will Marshall said in a statement.
“The public neither understands nor supports the FCC voting on net neutrality rules without greater disclosure of the exact wording and the details of the proposal,” said Peter Hart, the founder of Hart Research Associates, which conducted the survey. “In addition, a majority of Americans think ‘the government should not take a stronger and more active role in overseeing and regulating the Internet.’”
The poll surveyed 800 adults, with a margin of error ±3.46 percentage points.
