This California Democrat is single-handedly ruining our best chance to save net neutrality
A single California Democrat could be personally responsible for the death of net neutrality.
Assembly member and chairman of the Communications and Conveyance Committee Miguel Santiago, is caving to pressure from AT&T and Comcast’s lobbyists and blocking overwhelmingly popular state-level legislation that would restore net neutrality in the immediate wake of Trump administration’s repeal of open Internet protections.
Santiago has received more than $60,000 in funding from the telecom sector and AT&T is his #5 contributor over his Assembly career. So it’s no surprise that he wants to gut SB 822 and add gaping loopholes that ISPs asked for. And he thinks no one will care.
We need to show him that he’s wrong, right now. He needs to know that the whole Internet is watching. Call Miguel Santiago right now and tell him to stop standing in the way of real net neutrality. He should advance SB 822 IN FULL and resist attempts to water it down.
Capitol office: (916) 319–2053
Campaign office: (213) 538–8385
District office: (213) 620–4646
UPDATE: It appears Santiago is refusing to answer his phone and his mail boxes are full. Please tweet at him @santiagoAD53
Or go here and enter your phone number to get instantly connected: https://www.battleforthenet.com/call/california
Specifically Assemblyman Santiago wants to amend SB 822 to allow:
- ISPs to be able to charge any website, any amount of money simply so that website can be used by that ISP’s subscriber. These are called “access fees” and the U.S. internet has never had them. They were explicitly banned by the FCC in 2010 and 205
- Allow ISPs to throttle online services and websites at the point where data enters their networks. ISPS did this in 2013–2015, slowing down business services, online games and video for tens of millions of Americans until the FCC order in 2015 put a stop to it.
- Allow AT&T/TimeWarner and Comcast/NBCUniversal to use their pipes to make their content win by making all other online content count against your data caps, but not their own. That kind of zero-rating scheme hurts everyone and gives them even more incentive to keep your data caps artificially low
Allowing those practices is NOT net neutrality. Tell Santiago you want real, comprehensive net neutrality protections, not the fake ones his telecom donors want him to push.
Share this so everyone knows that this one California Democrat is selling us out. Get everyone you know in California to call and tell him to do the right thing. Pro-tip, you can use this link to pull up a list of your Facebook friends in California and encourage them to call Assemblyman Santiago!
