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The Trump Administration Just Voted To Repeal the US Government's Net Neutrality Rules (recode.net)
The Federal Communications Commission voted on Thursday to dismantle landmark rules regulating the businesses that connect consumers to the internet, granting broadband companies power to potentially reshape Americans' online experiences. The agency scrapped so-called net neutrality regulations that prohibited broadband providers from blocking websites or charging for higher-quality service or certain content. The federal government will also no longer regulate high-speed internet delivery as if it were a utility, like phone services. From a report: Under the leadership of Chairman Ajit Pai -- and with only the backing of the agency's Republican members -- the repeal newly frees telecom companies from federal regulation, unravels a signature accomplishment of the Obama administration and shifts the responsibility of overseeing the web to another federal agency that some critics see as too weak to be effective. In practice, it means the U.S. government no longer will have rules on its books that require internet providers to treat all web traffic equally. The likes of AT&T and Verizon will be limited in some ways -- they can face penalties if they try to undermine their rivals, for example -- but they won't be subject to preemptive, bright-line restrictions on how they manage their networks. Meanwhile, the FCC's repeal will open the door for broadband providers to charge third parties, like tech giants, for faster delivery of their web content.
Free to be slaves! But your guns TOTALLY keep the Queen of England at bay.. keke
No one is crying for Facebook and Google. It's a much bigger threat to small businesses than to the tech giants.
Google and Facebook will be fine. They may end up having to pay fees to the ISPs, but they have plenty of money and they'll be fine. The victims will be consumers and any new start-ups that can't afford the ISP fees needed to break into the market while they're still small and trying to grow.
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I'll be neg repped into oblivion but it was NOT the Trump Administration that repealed net neutrality, there are 5 people who are in charge of this and they voted down party lines. You want to go after someone, go after these folks. Trump didn't make this happen, these folks did:
Name Position State of Residence Party Term Expires†
Ajit Pai Chairman Kansas Republican June 30, 2021
Mignon Clyburn Commissioner South Carolina Democratic June 30, 2017
Brendan Carr Virginia Republican June 30, 2018
Michael O'Rielly New York Republican June 30, 2019
Jessica Rosenworcel Connecticut Democratic June 30, 2020
Wheel of Time: Book by Book and Sumview (summary review) Bigdady92 style: http://bigdady92.blogspot.com/
Pretty sure last year there were Trump supporters swearing up and down that this would never happen.
This comment was blocked due to non-payment for /. access -Comcast
Yea, democracy sucks when you insult half the country and they vote a way you don't like.
I suggest you keep it up. If I get called names just a few more times I'm likely to start voting democrat.
Best regards,
Deplorables
Nobody is crying for Netflix, either. This is about small businesses who won't have such an easy time paying the fees that ISPs could charge. It's a completely unnecessary barrier to entry that prevents competition and innovation.
Thank you for subscribing to your basic internet service. Please choose between the below options: 1) 100mb uncapped video service, included with your basic service. 2) 1gb uncapped video service, only $10/mo. 3) Each additional 1gb only charged at $5/mo. What a deal! ((Please note that the capped speed will limit you to 56k speed. The speeds you receive will also be limited by the service agreements we have reached with the provider of the video you desire and the contracts they have with all of the ISP's between your IP address and theirs so even with an unlimited speed agreement you may notice 56k speed caps due to those arrangements.)) Have a nice day!
The FCC is essentially punting their regulatory duties to another agency (FTC) that has little legal jurisdiction here. There needs to be at least a temporary injunction to halt this.
Demonstrating the irreparable harm to justify an injunction should be interesting
That's like saying the DOJ is "separate". Technically yes but Trump could have prevented this, except in reality he wanted net neutrality repealed.
And poor (insert local business) that doesn't have the money to pay for the premium internet pipe.
Goodbye to the internet we've come to know and love.
Gee, I wonder who appoints FCC commissioners? Guess we'll never know!
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
Netflix pays for their internet access just like everybody else, you numbnut.
Hillary had the same exact plan.
Citation for that? She is on the record supporting net neutrality, possibly going even further than the FCC has so far.
Poor us, who will see Netflix have to raise their rates as cable tv providers attempt to kill their competition with unwarranted fees
Big corporations love barriers to entry - keeps the little guy from innovation and disrupting the marketplace. Repealing Net Neutrality is an obvious dance to big money concerns.
Vote these bums out!
You wanna see what FCC chairman Ajit Pai thinks of you? Here is a video he posted yesterday to tell you why you should not worry about losing Net Neutrality.; He posted it on the right-wing website Daily Caller. (for real, you should watch this 1.5 minute video from Trump's FCC chairman, as he reveals he has no idea what Net Neutrality is, and also that he is a massive fuckwit.)
https://youtu.be/JeKK637IYAg
He's telling you all the things you'll still be able to do on the Internet after he signs over control to Comcast. Oh, and by the way, in the part of the video where he does the "Harlem Shake", one of the girls he's dancing with is a blogger who promoted the "Pizzagate" pedophilia controversy.
https://gizmodo.com/ajit-pai-t...
http://www.slate.com/blogs/fut...
You are welcome on my lawn.
Wait a second. Netflix doesn't pay for their own internet access?
See I see it as this, I pay for a connection to the internet, Netflix pays for a connection to the internet. Nobody else should be charging either of us extra to talk to each other as fast as any other website on the internet.
The FCC should Rey was created using the force, like Anakin, by Yoda and Obi-wan use the tools available to us
Were you writing two posts at the same time?
This is obviously punishment from God for gay marriage.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Republicans (in office) constantly complain about the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau because its single director has too much power, no external accountability and isn't subject to Congressional oversight (ie. control) and should either be abolished or changed to be run by a board of Commissioners, like the FCC.
Funny how they don't complain about the FCC behaving much the same way, even considering the FCC *has* a board of Commissioners and *is* subject to Congressional oversight. Maybe it's because the FCC is protecting corporations, not consumers - exactly like Republicans (in office) want.
I say "in office" because it seems many Representatives are doing what is in their best interest, regardless of what their constituents, who may also be Republicans, want. Sometimes, it seems the masses are more reasonable and responsible than their elected officials - sometimes.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
It is mind boggling that you have government control on one side by granting potentially abusive monopolies, and at the same time you remove any consumer protective regulation so that these monopolies can be as abusive as they want... Sure, the US has a decent GDP/capita, but that really is no excuse to have up to 10x the telco cost compared to other developed countries (and/or depending the location get stuck with circa 2000 internet speeds).
Well, OK, the fact that it is happening is not mind-boggling - just follow the money... The lack of realization/resistance from the people is the stranger and scarier aspect.
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
So I see a lot of negativity about this, even though in the past with no NN rules almost nothing happened, and when it did was shut down quickly (like torrent throttling).
So I have a challenge for you all worried about this. Today, make a note of how much your internet costs. Then do some speed tests and record the results.
In a year, do the same thing. How many of you seriously think we will be worse off?
I personally do not think much will change, if anything... there is little practical downside to the choice of the FCC, and so much fear mongering from the other side of things that it greatly strains credulity.
I do look forward to a year of ANY news having to do with an ISP being blamed on net neutrality though regardless of how it would have been affected by NN rules, sadly that's the one downside I am sure of...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Nice. An article written by a lobbyist and no proof Obama regulated the internet. All he did was say no to paywalls and throttling since the US government actually owns the internet
http://saveie6.com/
But now they get to pay twice, or even more. It will be so much better!!!
If you voted for a candidate solely because the other side made you feel butthurt, who's the real snowflake?
This country would be much better off if more people voted with their brain, rather than their ego.
---
DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
Ok so you have no evidence and are just talking out of your ass, glad we settled that.
You going to start throwing out the Constitution now because it's too old?
An ISP is a telecommunications service provider. Where is the argument that it isn't, outside of nutty libertarian blogs trying to torture language?
Their sole job is to provide connectivity between their customers and the Internet, a massive telecommunications network.
It should have been regulated like this from the start. I appreciate why it wasn't from the start, but the network is mature now, and most people only have a choice of two wireline providers. The technical issues are long resolved. The old excuses about hampering innovation no longer apply - if they ever did.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Remember way back in 2015, when we were all forced to pay $1 a byte for Internet service?
Me neither.
but end users will not put in meters on internet that are not checked and don't have an seal of approval.
IF a gas pump was rigged like any of ISP meters then there will be big fines.
If it is such a non-issue, why would they bother reversing such a law? And why do big ISP put money into bribing (lobbying) for such a change?
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
And so will we as we pay to unlock each website we visit.
I'm expecting ISP lootboxes in 2018.
Maybe this week you get 25mbps, maybe you get 5mbps. Ooooh? Didn't want that one? Buy another lootbox then.
This isn't theoretical at all. That's disingenuous. There are plenty of examples of ISPs attempting to engage in behavior that was prohibited by NN rules. Those rules are now gone.
This allows ISPs to block content as they see fit. Large ISPs like Comcast have already attempted to do this, though the NN rules did not allow that. Ajit Pai has said he believes Comcast should have the ability to block content or entire protocols. ISPs have engaged in zero rating services or content. For example, Verizon allows businesses to pay for their content to be zero rated. Comcast implemented their own streaming video service that didn't count against their data caps. None of this is theoretical at all.
This policy was pushed through in an extremely corrupt manner. Ajit Pai has made numerous false and misleading statements about NN. Many comments were submitted on behalf of individuals without their consent, people who aren't American citizens, people who are dead, or even people who don't exist at all. Most of the fraudulent comments were opposed to NN rules. The FCC has been far less than transparent in investigating this matter. They've selectively disregarded comments based on standards such as the legal language of the comments that weren't made known to the public during the commenting period. The process was rushed through despite the many objections I just listed. It was an extremely corrupt process by an extremely corrupt administration. If eliminating the NN rules isn't harmful, there would be no need for the process to be opaque, for Pai to make dishonest statements, and to rush the process.
Obama nominated him to the FCC, not the chair, because that's how the FCC works: Winning party gets three commissioners, losing party gets two, so Obama's hands were tied on that one.
After Trump was sworn in, he nominated Pai as chairman.
And now you know...the rest of the story!
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
you are being dishonest. You know perfectly well that this will be used to throttle bandwidth for non-paying content, and to censor.
To wrap that in bandwidth shows you don't know how the internet works, or if you do know then you are simply lying. I don't know you... you wouldn't lie, now would you????
They are going to charge Netflix you idiot so they can make it an unattractive option. Either it will be slow or have to raise prices.
Shouldn't the flag icon in the title be at half mast?
"We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology" -- Aldous Huxley
And that's the whole premise behind net neutrality; you've paid for your access, it shouldn't matter where you're connecting to.
Unfortunately, with the regulations that will govern what ISPs can do once this change goes into effect, as long as the ISP tells you up front what they're doing, it's all hunky-dory and legal. So if your ISP announces a change in terms of service that states that, because of the religious beliefs of the ISP management, customers will no longer be able to access any website that offers medical information about birth control or abortions, you're SOL. It's potentially like the opening narration of the TV series "The Outer Limits" -- "There is nothing wrong with your internet connection. Do not attempt to adjust your cablemodem. We are controlling transmission. If we wish to improve your access to a site, we will increase the bandwidth. If we wish to impede your access to a site, we will reduce its bandwidth. We will deny you access to any website critical of our actions, policies, or beliefs, and inject advertising for sites that pay us to do so into all web pages you access. Until Congress passes a law preventing us from doing this, sit back and we will control all that you see and hear on the internet."
If it is such a non-issue, why would they bother reversing such a law? And why do big ISP put money into bribing (lobbying) for such a change?
Now we wait for the other shoe to drop.
The mind conceives, the body achieves, the spirit manifests.
An ISP is a telecommunications service provider. Where is the argument that it isn't, outside of nutty libertarian blogs trying to torture language?
The law makes a distinction between the two. The argument comes from the law, court rulings on the law, and regulatory decisions based on the law. Yes, the FTC is a nutty libertarian blog that uses tortured language... -.-
FCC jurisdiction over broadband services arises under the Communications Act. Central to the broadband discussion is a distinction under that Act between “telecommunications services” and “information services.” The former, but not the latter, are subject to substantial mandatory common carrier regulations under Title II of the Communications Act. While not subject to the Title II common carrier regulations, information services are treated by the FCC as subject to its general, ancillary jurisdiction under Title I of the Communications Act.
As noted above, a series of regulatory and judicial decisions have helped to clarify both the distinction between information and telecommunications services and the status of broadband services as information services. That clarification is, to an extent, in tension with early regulatory and judicial attempts to grapple with the novel technologies that enabled the provision of Internet access. For example, in 1980, the FCC promulgated rules designed to address, among other things, the growing commerce in data-processing services available via telephone wires (the “Computer II Rules”). With reference to those rules, the FCC subsequently applied certain common carrier obligations, such as non-discrimination, to local telephone companies providing early DSL services. Further, as recently as 2000, the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held that “the transmission of Internet service to subscribers over cable broadband facilities is a telecommunications service under the Communications Act.” Still, the FCC’s current view that broadband services are information services has its roots in earlier decisions by the FCC and the courts. The same Computer II Rules that grounded the early DSL determination distinguished between “basic” and “enhanced” services and did not subject the latter to Title II common carrier regulation.In the following decade, the FCC recognized that ISPs provide not just “a physical connection [to the Internet], but also . . . the ability to translate raw Internet data into information [consumers] may both view on their personal computers and transmit to other computers connected to the Internet.” Moreover, the 1998 Universal Service Report regarded “non-facilities-based” ISPs – those that do not own their own transmission facilities – solely as information service providers. Indeed, even the Ninth Circuit opinion that held that ISPs offering cable broadband were offering telecommunications services recognized that, under the Communications Act and FCC implementing regulations, a significant portion of those services were information services.... In Brand X, the Supreme Court upheld the FCC’s determination that cable broadband is an information service as a reasonable construction of the Communications Act, reversing a Ninth Circuit decision that had relied on City of Portland as precedent.
The FTC has a good understanding of the issues and concerns. Since they are now going to be the ones regulating the internet, their opinion is appropriate.
The old excuses about hampering innovation no longer apply
No they still apply because it is part of the law. " It shall be the policy of the United States to encourage the provision of new technologies and services to the public. Any person or party (other
Netflix pays for internet access, not for a connection to a third party. Just like you pay Comcast for internet access, not just for access to Comcast's WAN. There is enough bandwidth on Netflix's side to reach all transit providers without congestion. The amount of traffic that can pass from the Tier 1 backbone operators (transit providers) into Comcast's WAN is a matter of negotiation between Comcast and the backbone operators. Comcast is not buying enough of that access to satisfy the contracts it has with its customers, who paid for internet access, not Comcast access.
The above explanation of the way every bit of Internet traffic is already paid for should be sufficient, but just to prove that Comcast really has no leg to stand on with that argument, here's more: Netflix will, at their own cost, provide servers and direct peering connections to any medium and large ISP, to cut the transit providers out and reduce the cost to themselves and the ISPs. They don't have to do that. Comcast thinks it should be paid for direct access to the Comcast network. Fine, then they should pay the transit providers. They took their customers' money for internet access, and they need to provide it.
But isn't buying enough transit to carry the data that Comcast's customers paid to access expensive? No, it's ridiculously cheap: You can buy 10Gbps unfettered bandwidth (transit to and from the whole internet) at $1500/month. That's $15 for 100Mbps, with a 1:1 contention ratio. Typical contention ratios for business connections are 1:10, for consumer connections 1:50. That means Comcast would have to pay between $0.30 and $1.50 to actually provide the internet access that Comcast's customers already pay for, but they want to get paid by both sides, so they make up these stories about expensive bandwidth and how content providers get a free ride. They're holding their captive customers hostage to extort money.
Hi. I'm Sarten-X. It's a big deal to me.
I've been working on a silly little web project, that someday I hope to turn into an income-generating company.
Unfortunately, my project relies on having fairly snappy response times (mostly low bandwidth/low latency, but occasionally having bursts of high bandwidth usage) for a good user experience. Without neutrality, I can't expect that any more. Traffic to and from my tiny little project will be queued behind the high-definition stream for Netflix, because I can't afford to pay Comcast (or Spectrum, or Verizon, or AT&T, or whoever else owns the customers) the millions of dollars in fees to get fast-lane prioritization.
Yes, it's speculation. It's also history, because I lived through the last round of these problems. I remember working with ISPs in the 90s and 2000s to figure out why certain traffic was unusually slow... sure enough, it's because that particular service had been deemed "low-priority" and was throttled. Fortunately at the time I had a big enough team of corporate lawyers that we could force a bit more throughput from the small ISP, but that's not usually the case today.
The reality is that probably 90% of Americans won't notice a difference. Their Netflix subscription might cost a few cents more, or their telecom stock value might get a small boost, but that's about it. The real loss is in potential. The next big Internet-based success might just be someone's silly little project today, and it'll likely never be able to grow because of the arbitrary limits placed by ISPs.
No, it's not just about torrents. It's about waiting for a product demo video to buffer, or waiting for an AJAX call to update a GUI, or waiting for a site's style sheet to properly load. It's about my user experience (and thus my project's success) being heavily dependent on how much extra money I pay to which ISPs, rather than how good my actual product is.
Yes, it's a big deal.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Because they effing deserved it. They were deplorables the same kinds that voted for Roy Moore couple of days back. A cancer to this nation!
Right as opposed to Al Franken, Anthony Weiner, the Kennedy Clan, Bill Clinton and all the rest of the democrats currently embroiled in scandals. Roy Moore has not admitted guilt. I thought we were supposed to assume innocent until proven guilty or an admission of guilt?
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
The cap isn't the issue (ok, it's another issue that is related). How much traffic you can get from a source (like Netflix or Vimeo) toward your cap is now something that can be manipulated. So you might be below your cap but unable to access Netflix. Did you opt in to that?
Because of Net Neutrality Laws, now Comcast has to shoulder the increased cost of all that traffic without being able to charge.
I don't get this. Doesn't Comcast already charge their customers for the bandwidth they use? Why should they be allowed to go shakedown the companies that their customers happen to access? Isn't it just Comcast's job to carry traffic from the edge of their network to their customers, at prices agreed with their customers? Why should they be able to discriminate based on where the traffic originated, and use that to extort money from the sources?
Trump gets a hard-on every time he gets to undo anything Obama managed to accomplish during his presidency.
Also, the two big cable companies that have divided and monopolized the US market get to make more money for crappy service! What's wrong with that?
I remember working at an ISP in the 2000s. We used QoS to prioritize or deprioritize traffic to certain services, mainly because warez and WoW were clogging the pipe. That was targeted at services. What they can do now is prioritize or fuck over specific businesses and the business will never know unless someone on the inside leaks the configuration. This will, guaranteed, lead to the most successful online businesses paying off carriers to interfere with the traffic of their competitors, making it difficult for a new business to get off the ground. They have already been doing something similar for a few years by having their PR agents plant news articles describing their competitors as racist, sexist troglodytes of the alt-right and pushing for them to be banned from industry conferences.
Just wanted to add that there's evidence Comcast did this on purpose in order to put Netflix in a bind. (Customers have alternative choices with Netflix, but not as many with Comcast.) They wanted to force Netflix to either agree to their demands to have their service unusable. Basically, mafia-style "this is a nice store you've got here, it'd be a shame if something happened to it" tactics from an ISP that holds a monopoly in many areas.
And now these tactics are legal again.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
You could buy unlocked phones before NN was signed and will continue to be able to buy them in future. Try again.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
If it is such a non-issue, why would they bother reversing such a law?
Among other reasons, BECAUSE IT WAS NEVER A LAW. If you think it SHOULD be a law, rather than an Obama-era edict to apply a decades old telephone framework to modern networking, then you should be delighted this is gone, and seeking to get some actual legislation in place. Something that reflects an era after rotary dial phones.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
I think you are mistaken. The next big thing will just happen elsewhere (China, or the EU) where they don't have ISP issues. It'll filter here once/if it gets big enough to be able to afford the fees, so we will only be 5-7 years behind the rest of the world.
The ISP's have no reason to censor
Sorry, are you seriously trying to say that Comcast, Time Warner, etc (The majority of ISPs are also TV providers) have no reason at all to want to censor Netflix, Amazon Video, Hulu? They have no reason to try and get people to switch back (or slow down) people from getting out from under their $250+ cable bills?
Wow.
because of the religious beliefs of the ISP management, customers will no longer be able to access any website that offers medical information about birth control or abortions,
Every time a NN proponent comes up with this kind of ridiculous hypothetical situation, they make their argument look ridiculous. Given that there can be serious, real issues, why do you folks keep trying to go further and further into imaginary-land?
Why not go fully nutzo? As long as the ISP tells you ahead of time that they're coming to confiscate your firstborn male child, they're hunky-dory! And if you don't have a child, yet, as long as they tell you they're going to come rape your wife, they're hunky-dory! And if you don't have a male child, they'll take your girl child and create a male child for you! And then burn your house down! All HUNKY-DORY because they told you in advance.
This didn't happen in 2014. Why do you think it will suddenly become a problem today?
Awesome, go ahead and throw out those strawmen, make sure you engage in the maximum amount of hyperbole to obfuscate the original argument!
One question I always have for NN opponents like yourselves, why do you trust the ISPs? Why do you simply take them at their word that they won't do anything wrong? They have proven in the past they are willing to engage in both anti-competitive and anti-consumer behavior, but you still go on thinking they are on your side, and that they are trustworthy. Why?
The whole point to NN regulations is to ensure there will be legal consequences to anti-consumer behavior, yet you want to just let the "free" market decide. Why do you ignore the evidence that they will not act in your best interest, and throw out any controls that can help ensure they do?
The supreme court disagrees with you. 545 U.S. 967 (2005).
No amount of magical finessing of language will get me to buy into the clearly ridiculous assertion L2 transceivers (Cable modems) and L3 forwarding of datagrams (ISP) constitute an "information service".
What's makes this farce even more absurd is concurrently asserting picking up a phone and calling someone is using a telecommunications service when sending an L3 datagram to that same person conveying the very same information is not a telecommunications service.
The DSPs in the CO must be exerting quite a force on the fabric of reality for this bullshit to make any logical sense.
It's a claim on it's face is simply not true as clear as saying the sky is green with orange polka-dots. I don't care if everyone in the world thinks that I'm wrong it doesn't change a damn thing.
"Information services" only work on top of "telecommunications" as their own definition of information service admits.
"The Act defines âoeinformation serviceâ as âoethe offering of a capability for generating, acquiring, storing, transforming, processing, retrieving, utilizing, or making available information via telecommunications ⦠.â "
So if L2/L3 devices are not "telecommunications" how can there be an information service on top of it? Yea there can't be ..because the arguments are clearly all bullshit.
You know what else?
The FCC maintains two separate mutually exclusive definitions of what broadband means. One definition says it's 200kbps the other says 25mbits. Both definitions are used concurrently in different contexts in order to get what they want under various statutes.
Whether your NSA claiming collection only counts when you look at what you stole or whether your FCC pondering the difference between a cable modem and a telephone to suite your agenda... I am not impressed.
Because after all these decades of doing nothing, now that it's GONE we can come up with something better.
I know, everything was such a disaster in 2015. Just horrible. It's no wonder Obama waited years and years after having the power to do something about it, to ... do what the huge corporate donors at places like Google and Amazon wanted him to do.
that's actually not harming anyone
Sure, unless you're, perhaps, a small company trying to set up rural users with fixed wireless service, or some other activity that's very important to people you don't care about.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
To be fair, none of them were embroiled in scandal *while campaigning.* ...and Most of them resigned as the scandals came out.
Republicans, on the other hand, almost seemed to use the accusations as a positive point.
=Smidge=
So, let me get this straight. ISPs do not "generate, acquire, store, transform, retrieve, utilize or make available information via telecommunications" in your mind?
CORRECT. They merely provide a "string" (telecommunications) that transmits and receives information to and from information services outside the ISPs administrative domain.
Maybe you can explain to me how the internet works without any information and is as dumb as a copper line.
Because you don't understand the difference between an eyeball network and a content network.
The Internet network itself...the portion that ISPs supply simply routes packets. It literally is a dumb wire with no intelligence baked into it at all.
All of the intelligence all of the information and data are at the edges of the network far beyond the administrative domain of the ISP.
Now, maybe you can explain to me how you can have an information service when the definition of information service relies on a telecommunications service which you assert does not exist in the case of the ISP?
The point is the existing law is flawed because it forces telecommunications service providers and information service providers to be a distinct thing which clearly they are not with modern internet and ISPs.
This is like opening a store that sells tires and toasters and bitching about laws pertaining to tires because they don't accommodate toasters.
*If* an ISP provides contents like a web hosting service or their own web content, video media libraries, directories... that portion of the ISP is a communication service.
The portion of the ISP that provides network access is a telecommunication service.
It isn't any more difficult than that. There is no ambiguity about these things inherent in the technology.
An ISP can provide more than one thing at once. They can even sell tires and toasters if they want. This changes NOTHING about the character of individual activities they are engaged in.
Both can be right and wrong at the same time because both are operating under the flawed distinction in the law that the FCC goes back and forth on. Namely, telecommunications service must be distinct from information service when an ISP is clearly both.
Clearly false. The wire leading to outside the administrative domain of the ISP is just as dumb as the wire leading outside the administrative domain of a Telco. There is no intelligence baked into that wire of any kind. All of the intelligence is in information services on the other end of the wire far outside the prevue of the ISP/teleco.
I understand what you are saying but you are being obtuse about it. Can the FCC ignore the law and the courts to give you what you want? No. Change the law because it is flawed. The FCC dancing back and forth does no one any favors.
No you don't. You clearly don't understand the basic reality of how the technology works and apparently neither do the lawyers.
You do realize that is the entire basis of the judiciary and this entire debacle?
There is a difference between making a good faith effort to resolve ambiguities and conflicts vs. deliberately bending language to selfishly have your way.