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Internet 'slowdown' helps drive new FCC record for comments

As Netflix, Kickstarter, Tumblr and a host of other websites on Wednesday urged users to chime in on the need for robust net neutrality rules, the FCC said that total public comments on the issue reached a record 1,477,301.

LOS ANGELES - As Netflix, Kickstarter, Tumblr and a host of other websites on Wednesday urged users to chime in on the need for robust net neutrality rules, the FCC said that total public comments on the issue reached a record 1,477,301.

That figure is greater than the previous record, the 1.4 million comments that flooded into the FCC following Janet Jackson's infamous "wardrobe malfunction" at the 2004 Super Bowl halftime show.

"Most submissions to an @FCC docket," Gigi Sohn, the FCC's special counsel for external affairs, wrote on Twitter.

An FCC spokesman said that the agency had received 73,606 comments so far on Wednesday.

Public interest groups, websites and other tech companies are participating in Wednesday's Internet "slowdown." It's not a real throttling of Internet speeds, but an awareness campaign in which sites like Netflix and Kickstarter are featuring symbolic spinning "loading" icons. They link to a site where users can take action to urge the FCC, their elected representative or the White House that net neutrality rules should prevent the web from devolving into fast lanes and slow lanes.

The FCC is devising a new set of net neutrality rules, but its plans stirred an outcry earlier this year as activists complained that an initial proposal wouldn't be strong enough to prevent Internet providers from charging content companies for quicker access to the consumer, giving them an advantage over sites that can't afford to pay. The FCC had in place a previous set of net neutrality rules, but, after a court challenge from Verizon, most were struck down by a D.C. Circuit Court in January.

The "slowdown" was organized by public interest groups Demand Progress, Fight for the Future, Free Press Action Fund and Engine Advocacy. The icon is a symbol of what they warn could happen if so-called "paid prioritization" is not banned outright in the new net neutrality rules. The groups said that 10,000 sites were participating. in some form. Among them was the Writers Guild of America, West, which featured the spinning icon on its site.

Google, one of the foremost net neutrality champions when rules were written in 2010, did not display the icon. But a spokeswoman noted that the company was sending out emails to those who have signed up to its Take Action site, calling for rules that prevent paid prioritization and that apply to the wired and wireless Internet.

Comcast also chimed in on Wednesday, as its executive vice president, David L. Cohen, wrote that the company supports "reasonable and workable rules" for the Internet.

"Today, a few organizations and businesses who have built their success on the Internet are participating in a day of online action to demand new - and very different and, we believe, destructive - regulations in the name of preserving an open Internet," he wrote. "As part of this action, some are making accusations that 'cable companies' want to 'break the Internet.'

"We want you to know that Comcast has no desire to break the Internet - or to do anything else to disturb its fundamental openness," he added.

He said that while Comcast supported rules that prevent an Internet provider from blocking content or discriminating against certain sites, as well as ones that require disclosure of traffic management practices, they oppose a move that some, but not all, of the Internet "slowdown" groups have called for: Reclassifying the Internet as a telecommunications service. That would give the FCC greater regulatory oversight and, in the eyes of some public interest groups and lawmakers, a firmer legal footing to enforce net neutrality.

Cohen warned that such a move would "only serve to stifle the incredible investment and innovation that we have enjoyed to date."