US Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, the leader of the Democrats in the upper chamber of Congress, is very concerned about what will happen to screwing once the Federal Communications Commission puts its new rules enabling ISPs to violate net neutrality principles into effect in a little under two months.
On Wednesday, Schumer’s official Twitter account inquired whether allowing ISPs to discriminate against content providers like Netflix would have a detrimental impact on the boning rates of the nation’s couples:
Without #NetNeutrality when a couple is streaming their favorite #Netflix show but it keeps lagging and killing the mood, who will be to blame?
— Chuck Schumer (@SenSchumer) February 27, 2018
In fairness to Schumer, anyone who has experienced a constantly buffering Netflix or HBO Go stream knows that it does in fact kind of ruin the mood? When the man’s right, he’s right! On the other hand, in extreme unfairness to Schumer, it was probably a bad idea to tell him (or any other senator, for that matter) about Netflix and chilling.
Regardless, Schumer and other Democrats are doing what they can to save net neutrality – it’s possible that Senate leadership will succeed in securing one more vote there sometime this Autumn, which would grant in one chamber the majority necessary to invoke the Congressional Review Act and overrule the FCC’s decision.
Unfortunately, the chances of that kind of coup are near nil in the House, where Democrats are over 100 lawmakers short of getting such a vote past the Republican majority. Even were it to pass in both houses, US President Donald Trump holds veto power that, let’s face it, he’d probably use.
Schumer said on Tuesday he plans to emphasise net neutrality as an issue going into the 2018 midterms in the very likely scenario Democrats’ current legislative efforts fail, while lawsuits of varying likelihood of success are being prepped by internet advocacy groups with the support of major tech giants as well as at least 23 state attorneys general.
None of these efforts may come to anything beyond forcing Republicans to own the fallout when ISPs inevitably begin abusing customers and content providers in the post-net neutrality world, but it’s something at least.