The folks who invented the internet are now trying to save it.

Twenty-one people, among them the creators of the internet, sent a letter to ranking members of the House and Senate subcommittees dealing with communication and technology urging them to ask Ajit Pai, chairman of the FCC, to cancel this week's vote on rolling back net neutrality .

“The FCC's rushed and technically incorrect proposed Order to abolish net neutrality protections without any replacement is an imminent threat to the Internet we worked so hard to create. It should be stopped,” the letter stated.

The FCC is scheduled to vote on the proposed Restoring Internet Freedom Order on Thursday. The order would repeal many Obama-era protections that prevent internet service providers, or ISPs, from slowing down or speeding up service based on customers or cost and blocking certain content, websites or apps.

U.S. Rep. Mike Doyle, D-Forest Hills, received the letter and said he agrees with the concerns raised by its authors. Doyle, a member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee and the ranking member of its Subcommittee on Communications and Technology, is circulating among his colleagues his own letter asking Pai to cancel the vote.

“I believe that the action that the chairman is taking is flawed and it will result in no rules for the internet and we'll have to trust that the ISPs won't be behaving badly,” Doyle said in an interview with the Tribune-Review on Monday.

Doyle said 60 representatives have signed his letter, and he hopes to get another 40 before the vote.

Pai, who was appointed to the FCC by Obama and then tapped to head the commission by President Trump, has favored scaling back regulation of the internet in favor of what he calls a “light touch.” Pai spoke at Carnegie Mellon University's Software Engineering Institute in March and said the government should step in only when a company misbehaves.

The letter, signed by internet pioneers and luminaries such as Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak; Tim Berners-Lee, an MIT professor and the inventor of the World Wide Web; Brewster Kahle, founder of the Internet Archive; and Mitchell Baker, executive chairwoman of the Mozilla Foundation, which developed the popular Firefox browser. The letter stated the FCC order was based on flawed understanding of how the internet works and plagued by a lack of public hearings and troubles with public commenting.

Doyle said he is disappointed that Pai hasn't been swayed by the concerns of people who he said likely understand the internet more than anyone else. Doyle doubted his committee would take any action to stop Pai given its makeup of representatives supporting the repeal of net neutrality. The congressman said he will look to the courts to take action if the vote happens this week and the provisions are repealed.

“Congress could pass legislation, but I think a lot of us don't want to go down that route yet until we see what the courts say,” Doyle said.

Aaron Aupperlee is a Tribune-Review staff writer. Reach him at aaupperlee@tribweb.com, 412-336-8448 or via Twitter @tinynotebook.

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