The past week has been remarkable if anticipatable. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Ajit Pai announced his plans to roll back the 2015 Open Internet Order (OIO) on Tuesday. On Wednesday, he released the text of the Restoring Internet Freedom Order (RIFO), which will replace the Open Internet Order. The details of the RIFO are largely as expected, undoing the OIO’s Title II reclassification of Broadband Internet Access Services, disclaiming Section 706 as a grant of regulatory authority, putting forth evidence that the OIO’s promise to increase investment and deployment has not manifested (and, if anything, backfired), and generally rescinding the majority of the rules adopted in 2015.

The response to the RIFO has also been, in broad strokes, as anticipated, with pro-net neutrality voices taking to the media with proclamations of the internet’s impending death. Further responses have come from pro-net neutrality legal commentators providing assurances that the RIFO will be overturned in court. These assurances — and the arguments provided to support them — have also largely been as one would expect: the Commission’s change in policies is arbitrary and capricious, the classification decision isn’t a permissible reading of the statute, and the Commission lacks factual support for the Order.

Read the full article by Gus Hurwitz about net neutrality from American Enterprise Institute