With Thursdayâs party-line vote, the FCC redefined internet service as similar to legacy telephone lines, a sweeping move that comes with greater regulatory power over the broadband industry.
Leading FCC officials have said restoring net neutrality rules, and reclassifying ISPs under Title II of the agencyâs congressional charter, would provide the FCC with clearer authority to adopt future rules governing everything from public safety to national security.
âBroadband is a telecommunications service and should be regulated as such,â said Justin Brookman, director for technology policy at Consumer Reports. âThe Title II authority will ensure that broadband providers are properly overseen by the FCC like all telecommunications services should be.
âThese 400-plus pages of relentless regulation are proof positive that old orthodoxies die hard,â said Jonathan Spalter, CEO of USTelecom, a trade association representing internet providers.
My god the fucking irony. The trade association made up of Broadband ISPs, arguing that they shouldn't be regulated as Telecom providers, is literally called... USTelecom.
"Don't treat us like ducks!" said the trade association representative from USDucks.
I think net neutrality is a good thing, but could this reclassification mean that the FCC will have increased authority to police content online? There has been a lot of worrying activity around that lately in general, and the FCC has a history of imposing censorship on traditional media.
These net neutrality policies ensured you can go where you want and do what you want online without your broadband provider making choices for you. They made clear your broadband provider should not have the right to block websites, slow services, or censor online content. These policies were court tested and approved. They were wildly popular. In fact, studies show that 80 percent of the public support the FCCâs net neutrality policies and opposed their repeal.
The closest we get to online censorship is obscenity laws, which one might think applies to porn, but obscenity is actually defined much more narrowly than just "content designed to arouse". Obscenity is basically stuff that even Hugh Hefner would find offensive, stuff the average adult would find deeply repulsive and abhorrent (not just a little bit, the exact language is "patently offensive"). Adult content in general (obscenity & indecency) is banned from broadcast media during daytime hours to keep kids from seeing it; subscription-based services are exempt from such rules, which presumably means that the adults who pay for the subscription are supposed to be the ones preventing kids from using it to view adult material, if such is possible. I expect this is why anything which does manage to qualify as obscene is typically very hard to get to unless you really want to see it, so nobody who might report it ever actually finds it.
It's worth mentioning that obscenity laws apply whether Net Neutrality is a thing or not, so having it will be a net reduction in the avenues through which content may be censored or policed. Now if only they'd ban ISPs from selling your data to brokers...
That is the worst misrepresentation of Net Neutrality I've ever seen. This "article" makes it sound like the government is protecting you. It makes me want to vomit. They get away with this because nobody reads the actual bills. They just take what the media writes and accepts it as truth.
Now, for the user above, I'm not entirely sure what they're talking about since this isn't a bill that has been passed, but net neutrality is to protect consumers - it's to ensure large companies cannot stack the deck to make you use their preferred (owned) services.
This comment is the worst misrepresentation of penguins I've ever seen. It sounds like a red herring. It makes me want to vomit. People get away with this because nobody actually knows what penguins are. They just take what the media writes and accepts it as truth.
On a serious note, plenty of people here surely know what net neutrality is. Net neutrality is the guarantee that your ISP doesn't (de-)prioritize traffic or outright block traffic, all packets are treated equally. In other words it means you don't have to pay $5 extra for high speed access to Lemmy because Reddit and your ISP (say Comcast) would prefer Lemmy not exist.
On a serious note, plenty of people here surely know what net neutrality is. Net neutrality is the guarantee that your ISP doesnât (de-)prioritize traffic or outright block traffic, all packets are treated equally.
Thatâs true but itâs also the common (but overly shallow) take. Itâs applicable here and good enough for the thread, but itâs worth noting that netneutrality is conceptually deeper than throttling and pricing games and beyond ISP shenanigans. The meaning was coined by Tim Wu, who spoke about access equality.
People fixate on performance which I find annoying in face of Cloudflare, who is not an ISP but who has done by far the most substantial damage to netneutrality worldwide by controlling who gets access to ~50%+ of worldâs websites. The general public will never come to grasp Cloudflareâs oppression or the scale of it, much less relate it to netneutrality, for various reasons:
Cloudflare is invisible to those allowed inside the walled garden, so its existence is mostly unknown
The masses can only understand simple concepts about their speed being throttled. Understanding the nuts and bolts of discrimination based on IP address reputation is lost on most.
The US gov is obviously pleased that half the worldâs padlocked web traffic is trivially within their unwarranted surveillance view via just one corporation in California. They donât want people to realize the harm CF does to netneutrality and pressure lawmakers to draft netneutrality policy in a way thatâs not narrowly ISP-focused.
Which means netneutrality policy is doomed to ignore Cloudflare and focus on ISPs.
Most people at least have some control over which ISP they select. Competition is paltry, but we all have zero control over whether a website they want to use is in Cloudflareâs exclusive walled garden.
A website isnât a common carrier, you cannot argue that a website isnât allowed to control who they serve their content to. An ISP is a common carrier because they simply act as a dumb pipe between the provider (websites) and the consumer.
Cloudflare is a tool websites use to exercise that right, necessitated by the ever rising prevalence of bots and DDoS attacks. Your proposed definition of net neutrality would destroy anyoneâs ability to deal with these threats.
Can you at least provide examples of legitimate users who are hindered by the use of Cloudflare?
We were talking about network neutrality, not just common carriers (which are only part of the netneutrality problem).
you cannot argue that a website isnât allowed to control who they serve their content to.
Permission wasnât the argument. When a website violates netneutrality principles, itâs not a problem of acting outside of authority. They are of course permitted to push access inequality assuming we are talking about the private sector where the contract permits it.
Cloudflare is a tool websites use to exercise that right,
One manâs freedom is another manâs oppression.
necessitated by the ever rising prevalence of bots and DDoS attacks.
It is /not/ necessary to use a tool as crude and reckless as Cloudflare to defend from attacks with disregard to collateral damage. There are many tools in the toolbox for that and CF is a poor choice favored by lazy admins.
Your proposed definition of net neutrality would destroy anyoneâs ability to deal with these threats.
Only if you neglect to see admins who have found better ways to counter threats that do not make the security problem someone elses.
Can you at least provide examples of legitimate users who are hindered by the use of Cloudflare?
That was enumerated in a list in the linked article you replied to.
