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FCC Chairman Ajit Pai Plans Fast-Track Repeal of Net Neutrality (reuters.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: The chairman of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission is moving quickly to replace the Obama administration's landmark net neutrality rules and wants internet service providers to voluntarily agree to maintain an open internet, three sources briefed on the meeting said Thursday. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, a Republican appointed by President Donald Trump, met on Tuesday with major telecommunications trade groups to discuss his preliminary plan to reverse the rules, the sources said. The rules approved by the FCC under Democratic President Barack Obama in early 2015 prohibited broadband providers from giving or selling access to speedy internet, essentially a "fast lane," to certain internet services over others. As part of that change, the FCC reclassified internet service providers much like utilities. Pai wants to overturn that reclassification, but wants internet providers to voluntarily agree to not obstruct or slow consumer access to web content, two officials said late Tuesday. The officials briefed on the meeting said Pai suggested companies commit in writing to open internet principles and including them in their terms of service, which would make them binding. It is unclear if regulators could legally compel internet providers to adopt open internet principles without existing net neutrality rules. As part of that move, the Federal Trade Commission would assume oversight of ensuring compliance.Three sources said Pai plans to unveil his proposal to overturn the rules as early as late April and it could face an initial vote in May or June.
If Pai is trying to compel service providers to put the principles of an open Internet in their service contracts, why not just mandate net neutrality by law? This seems to be a way to allow net neutrality to die a slow death. Begin by getting ISPs to do it voluntarily so it appears we're maintaining it, but then over time you will see companies back down from that and net neutrality will be eroded.
"voluntarily agree"
I can already hear the evil villain laughs from the boardrooms of our monopolistic content masters, lighting cigars with $100 bills and slapping each other on the back with hearty gusto.
If I could take my business elsewhere, this wouldn't matter so much. In the designated local monopoly for ISPs that most Americans exist within, it's just pathetic.
Most net neutrality discussion center about how shaping traffic based on tcp ports or type of media transferred is not relevant to net neutrality because that is only about sources and sinks. I agree with this.
However why is it even allowed for the ISP to interpret the TCP headers. They are not necessary to transport data to some other IP. Only the target IP should be legally allowed to interpret this data and if anyone else does it it should be considered wiretapping and prosecuted as such.
Just like the post office is not allowed to read your mail past the address it need for delivery and your phone provider is not allowed to listen to in on your phone calls the ISP should not be allowed to look at your data.
Or more likely it will be both. Netflix pays a fee to be included in a bundle, then charge consumers to subscribe to the bundle.