60% of respondents in a Morning Interview/POLITICO poll said they support rules that say ISPs like Comcast Corp. and Verizon Communications Inc. “cannot stop, throttle or prioritize certain content on the internet.”
The difference among supporters by the party was 2 percentage points, with 59% of Republicans and 61% of Democrats supporting the rules. The same percentage of tea party followers and Democrats expressed strong support for net neutrality, at 37%.
ISPs such as Comcast say they are devoted to the net neutrality principles. But they don’t like the legal foundation on which the rules were built specifically, regulating ISPs like services by classifying broadband Internet as a “common carrier” under Title II of the Communications Act of 1934.
“Our divisions believe consumers deserve enforceable rules that prevent the blocking or throttling of legal internet traffic without relying on out-of-date regulations that can suffocate needed investments in networks,” said Amy Schatz, vice president of media operations for ISP trade group U.S. Telecom, in an email to Morning Consult.
Net neutrality supports to point out that Verizon sued the FCC in 2011 over net neutrality rules addressed under Title I of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, with broadband listed as an “information service.”
The U.S. District Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ordered in favor of Verizon in 2014 and recommended that if the FCC wanted to enforce net neutrality rules for ISPs, they would have to list them under Title II, a classification that would open them up to “utility-style” ordinances.
A poll in April saw that 51 percent of registered voters opposed treating the Internet like a utility, though 61 percent said they supported net neutrality under that circumstances.
In 2015, the FCC supported the court’s suggestion and adopted an Open Internet order establishing the common carrier classification ISPs argue.
The seeming issue has received revived public attention recently by way of a severe HBO riff by comedian John Oliver, who encouraged people to write the FCC to guarantee it keeps “strong net neutrality rules” on its books. The video clip from early May has about 4.5 million views on YouTube.
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