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Oregon Becomes Second State To Pass a Net Neutrality Law (katu.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from KATU: Oregon Gov. Kate Brown signed a bill Monday withholding state business from internet providers who throttle traffic, making the state the second to finalize a proposal aimed at thwarting moves by federal regulators to relax net neutrality requirements. The bill stops short of actually putting new requirements on internet service providers in the state, but blocks the state from doing business with providers that offer preferential treatment to some internet content or apps, starting in 2019. The move follows a December vote by the Federal Communications Commission repealing Obama-era rules that prohibited such preferential treatment, referred to generally as throttling, by providers like AT&T, Comcast, and Verizon. Brown's signature makes the state the second to enact such legislation, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. It also stakes out the state's claim to a moderate approach, compared to others: Five weeks to the day before Brown, Washington State Gov. Jay Inslee signed a bill in his state to directly regulate providers there. The prohibition, which restricts with whom the state may contract for internet services, applies to cities and counties, but exempts areas with only a single provider.
That makes perfect sense! Water is a public utility so my neighbors pool is a public pool!
I'm pretty sure you're allowed to limit access to your "pool" (website) but if you are the "water company" (ISP), you can't gouge people who want to use the "water" (access) to fill their "pools" instead of using that publically owned utility for any other purpose. If you're a pool owner who sells pool access, you're going to have to pass off the special pool water price increase to your customers. And what happens when Big Pool pays off the water company to keep you from filling up your backyard pool at a reasonable rate? Funny how much better this analogy works as an argument in favor of NN.
That is like saying that phones are public utilities, therefore every service available over the phone is a public utility.
Net neutrality is about having neutral infrastructure, not neutral services. Things only become a problem when there's a private company that both owns the only infrastructure available in an area and has a monopoly on service provided through it. When the infrastructure was phone lines, and ISPs were a number you dialed, NN wasn't an issue (neutral providers could compete, because you could reach them from the same phone lines). This competition pretty much stopped after migration to (mostly cable based) broadband.