SPOTLIGHT: Tech firms assail proposed broadband rules

Amazon, eBay, Google, Microsoft, and InterActiveCorp all told Congress that proposed changes and updates to the 1996 Telecommunications Act would be bad for the industry and for users. Also chiming in was Vint Cerf, the TCP co-inventor and now a Google employee. In a letter, he said: "My fear is that, as written, this bill would do great damage to the Internet as we know it. Enshrining a rule that broadly permits network operators to discriminate in favor of certain kinds of services and to potentially interfere with others would place broadband operators in control of online activity... Telephone companies cannot tell consumers who they can call; network operators should not dictate what people can do online." How Congress will react to these critiques is unclear. Article