The US government on Thursday banned internet service providers (ISPs) from meddling in the speeds their customers receive when browsing the web and downloading files, restoring tough rules rescinded during the Trump administration and setting the stage for a major legal battle with the broadband industry.
It’s worth mentioning that obscenity laws apply whether Net Neutrality is a thing or not
Couldn’t this reclassification affect that sort of thing in a jurisdiction sense though? Again, I like net neutrality, mostly because the idea of something like the standard internet option being Facebook only is terrifying, but it sounds like a big part of this is reclassifying ISPs to be subject to rules made by the FCC. I’d really rather it be a law passed by congress, and I worry about how federal agencies might abuse their powers over the internet when those powers are expanded in general. I’m not really sure how much it generally expands their authority over the internet, but it seems like it might.
“Title II” in this context refers to Subchapter II of 47 U.S.C. Chapter 5. 47 U.S.C. is the Communications Act of 1934, the act of Congress that established the FCC, and Chapter 5 is the part that deals with “Wire and Radio Communications.”
If you want to know what this law empowers the FCC to do, you can read the statute yourself. Or, if that’s too difficult, you can also use your access to the internet to look up more accessible sources, such as Wikipedia’s “Common carrier” article.
I feel like reading statutes is unreliable because a lot of how the law works is how courts interpret the law, which can be very different from the commonsense interpretation of the letter of the law. Lacking broader context, I can’t know from just this exactly what the consequences might be. Here’s some parts that are possibly concerning though:
The Commission may, in its discretion, prescribe the forms of any and all accounts, records, and memoranda to be kept by carriers subject to this chapter, including the accounts, records, and memoranda of the movement of traffic
Not sure if this increases the ability of the government to spy on people through their ISPs or if that remains the same.
(a) Requirement to restrict access
(1) Prohibited conduct
Whoever knowingly and with knowledge of the character of the material, in interstate or foreign commerce by means of the World Wide Web, makes any communication for commercial purposes that is available to any minor and that includes any material that is harmful to minors shall be fined not more than $50,000, imprisoned not more than 6 months, or both.
Some states have been experimenting with broad bans on online porn sites and requiring those sites and also social media sites to demand id from all users, maybe this provision could give a future FCC the power to apply this sort of thing to the internet nationally? Although this section already explicitly mentions the internet which is confusing if this whole thing is only recently being made relevant to the internet.
There are provisions about the FCC being able to come up with rules for the prevention of robocalls, maybe this could be generalized to prohibit some forms of automated network traffic?
Couldn’t this reclassification affect that sort of thing in a jurisdiction sense though? Again, I like net neutrality, mostly because the idea of something like the standard internet option being Facebook only is terrifying, but it sounds like a big part of this is reclassifying ISPs to be subject to rules made by the FCC. I’d really rather it be a law passed by congress, and I worry about how federal agencies might abuse their powers over the internet when those powers are expanded in general. I’m not really sure how much it generally expands their authority over the internet, but it seems like it might.
“Title II” in this context refers to Subchapter II of 47 U.S.C. Chapter 5. 47 U.S.C. is the Communications Act of 1934, the act of Congress that established the FCC, and Chapter 5 is the part that deals with “Wire and Radio Communications.”
If you want to know what this law empowers the FCC to do, you can read the statute yourself. Or, if that’s too difficult, you can also use your access to the internet to look up more accessible sources, such as Wikipedia’s “Common carrier” article.
I feel like reading statutes is unreliable because a lot of how the law works is how courts interpret the law, which can be very different from the commonsense interpretation of the letter of the law. Lacking broader context, I can’t know from just this exactly what the consequences might be. Here’s some parts that are possibly concerning though:
Not sure if this increases the ability of the government to spy on people through their ISPs or if that remains the same.
Some states have been experimenting with broad bans on online porn sites and requiring those sites and also social media sites to demand id from all users, maybe this provision could give a future FCC the power to apply this sort of thing to the internet nationally? Although this section already explicitly mentions the internet which is confusing if this whole thing is only recently being made relevant to the internet.
There are provisions about the FCC being able to come up with rules for the prevention of robocalls, maybe this could be generalized to prohibit some forms of automated network traffic?