In the wake of the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) decision to scrap network neutrality, Ajit Pai appears to be a not very popular person right now.
We’re still in the early days after the vote, but American’s are still reeling. The US’s telecommunications regulator, the FCC, voted to repeal network neutrality earlier this week. With the vote over and done with, the new policy needs time to take effect. So the question on a lot of American’s minds is, what can be done to fight this now?
Already, there is movement to fight this. In addition to the pending litigation, some lawmakers are forging ahead with laws to protect network neutrality. Some of these lawmakers operate on the state level, so it will be interesting to see if they can fend off the ban on protecting network neutrality on the state level. Other’s are operating on the federal level, so it’ll be interesting to see how lawmakers deal with the fact that all levels of government is Republican controlled right now.
Of course, putting laws in the law book and litigating are only two methods of fighting this. So, it seems some American’s are taking matters into their own hands. Word is surfacing that a petition has been created demanding FCC chairman, Ajit Pai, resign. From Mashable:
An online petition demanding the resignation of Ajit Pai, the organization’s chairman, pulled in over 100,000 names by Friday, just over 24 hours after the vote. The page at MoveOn.org blames Pai for “ignoring millions of complaints about removing net neutrality and for impeding freedom of speech on the internet” and demands he step aside.
“Ajit Pai needs to stand down. He has no respect for democracy, no respect for freedom of speech, no respect for this country,” one signee wrote.
“Someone so out of touch with what the majority of Americans wanted should not be chairperson of the FCC,” another said. “He’s shown himself to be a lap dog to the big ISPs.”
The petition itself is organized by Move On. The petition itself is now sitting at over 150,000 signatures as of this writing.
It’s difficult to say whether or not this petition could lead to any kind of actual change in the government. Still, it is one more way that American’s can voice their displeasure over the move to scrap the rules protecting the open Internet.
Drew Wilson on Twitter: @icecube85 and Google+.
