Scary Net Neutrality Stories

"[FCC chairman Ajit] Pai's plan to kill the Internet as we know it ..."-- from an email from Kurt Walters of Fight For the Future

"Donald Trump and his corporate cronies are about to destroy the Internet." -- from an email from Eden James of Democracy for America

"Pai is paving the way for monopolistic ISPs to block and censor what we see online, and push anyone who can't pay extra fees into 'internet slow lanes.' The impact on free speech and innovation online will be devastating." -- from an email from Carli Stevenson of Demand Progress

"Without net neutrality, the Internet will look more like cable TV — where the content we see is controlled by corporations like Comcast and Verizon." -- from an email from the RootsAction.org team

"Dear Tom, When people start having to trudge through molasses to read Rational Review News Digest, KN@PPSTER, or the Garrison Center websites, or worse, get 405 errors (that’s the one for forbidden content, isn’t it?), e-mail me and let me know how successful you are at appealing and/or how much squeeze you had to pay to get things normal again. If your e-mail still works, of course." -- from an email from a friend who's upset about "Pai's plan to kill the Internet as we know it."

My reply to the last one:

From the birth of the web until October of 2015, the "Net Neutrality" rule that is being repealed didn't exist.

If its absence is going to cause the End of the Internet now, why didn't it before?

In point of fact, getting rid of "Net Neutrality" will likely mean that my sites are more accessible [and] faster, because Big Data may start having to pay Big Telecom for those fat pipes it wants instead of using the government to force my 73-year-old neighbor who checks her email once a day to pick up their infrastructure use tab.

As far as "forbidden content" is concerned, I've already explained that "Net Neutrality" CREATES that possibility by referring to something called "legal content" and leaving it up to the FCC to decide what is and is not "legal content." Do you want the Trump regime deciding what content may be served and what content may not be served? Because the rule you're demanding be kept gives them that power.

A Reminder: "Net Neutrality" is Also an Internet Censorship Enabling Act

Today is the day when Big Content pretends to be "defending the free and open Internet" by protesting the possible repeal of the Federal Communications Commission's "Net Neutrality" rule.

The main -- and quite sound -- argument against Net Neutrality is that it is a subsidy to Big Content at the expense of ISP customers.

That is, Netflix and Amazon and Google don't want to pay the costs of building and maintaining fatter pipes to carry their high-bandwidth content (e.g. streaming high-definition video).

Rather than be the ones hiking subscription fees or advertising rates for their customers, they prefer to let the ISPs be the bad guys who have to put bandwidth limits on customers to reduce net congestion, and jack up the monthly ISP bill for the little old lady who checks her email twice a day and looks at some pictures of cats to cover the costs of building and maintaining the pipes for the binge-streamers.

But there's another big problem with the "Net Neutrality" rule. From Section 15 of the final rule:

Consumers who subscribe to a retail broadband Internet access service must get what they have paid for -- access to all (lawful) destinations on the Internet. ... A person engaged in the provision of broadband Internet access service, insofar as such person is so engaged, shall not block lawful content, applications, services, or non-harmful devices, subject to reasonable network management.

And from Section 113:

the no-blocking rule adopted today again applies to transmissions of lawful content and does not prevent or restrict a broadband provider from refusing to transmit unlawful material, such as child pornography or copyright-infringing materials. (Similar to the 2010 no-blocking rule, this obligation does not impose any independent legal obligation on broadband providers to be the arbiter of what is lawful.)

(Italics in the above quotes are the FCC's; emphasis by bolding is mine)

So, guess who's going to decide what content is "lawful" and what content is "unlawful?"

In the absence of specific legislation, as well as in accordance with specific legislation, the FCC will be deciding that as a matter of "administrative law." And having arrogated themselves this power over broadband Internet under a ... creative ... interpretation of Title II, they will not just tell the ISPs that they have to transmit "lawful" content neutrally, they will also tell the ISPs that they cannot transmit "unlawful content" at all.

How long before the Recording Industry Association of America and the Motion Picture Association of America come to the FCC to get an EU-style "upload filtering" rule implemented, requiring ISPs and web sites (probably with exemptions for the Big Content platforms) to actively monitor for, and block, allegedly copyright-infringing material?

Or for that matter to just deem, for example, torrent files to be "unlawful content" ("there's no need for that format, it's used almost entirely for bootlegging"). If you don't think that can happen, think of the "drug paraphernalia" laws that are used against people with certain kinds of pipes and spoons whether that stuff is actually being used to consume unapproved drugs or not.

If the war on strong crypto comes back (and the politicians keep flirting with that), perhaps the FCC will require email servers to watch for and block messages with the string "-----BEGIN PGP MESSAGE-----" in them.

Maybe the FCC will decide (at the behest of the US Treasury Department or Congress) to crack down on unapproved financial transactions by requiring the ISPs to watch for and block data bearing the "fingerprints" of cryptocurrency transactions.

"Free and open" my ass. The "Net Neutrality" rule is an Internet censorship rule merely awaiting implementation.

My Comment to the FCC on Net Neutrality Repeal

The Federal Communications Commission is now accepting public comment on its pending proposal to repeal Tom Wheeler's 2015 Title II "Net Neutrality" power grab. The Electronic Frontier Foundation offers an online tool that makes it easy to comment. They pre-fill the comment form with pro-Net-Neutrality language, but you can ditch that pre-fill verbiage and say anything you like. Here's my comment -- feel free to use any of it that you like in putting together your own:

Thanks to the FCC for taking up the matter of "Net Neutrality" repeal.

Title II "Net Neutrality" is a dangerous power grab -- a solution in search of a problem that doesn't exist, with the potential to become an engine of censorship (requiring ISPs to non-preferentially deliver "legal content" invites the FCC and other regulatory and legislative bodies to define some content as "illegal").

Title II "Net Neutrality" is also an instance of regulatory capture through which large consumers of bandwidth (such as Google and Netflix) hope to externalize the costs of network expansions to accommodate their ever-growing bandwidth demands. To put it differently, instead of building those costs into the prices their customers pay, they want to force Internet users who AREN'T their customers to subsidize their bandwidth demands.

Please go through with the repeal of Title II "Net Neutrality."