hmmm, what is "lawful" internet traffic and what is not? While the FCC may not be acting as a price setter, it will most definitely be acting as a market setter.
The very term "net neutrality" is disingenuous crap to begin with. That conception of the internet embodied by the early RFCs(more or less a dumb network with the intelligence is distributed at the end points) died with the 1988 Morris worm. In practice, networks filter, and I doubt anyone would much tolerate a tier provider that didn't have a security filter regime in place.
The question then is not net neutrality but one of supplanting a heuristic filtering regime with a formal one regulated by a rent-seeking game. This rent-seeking game is defined by "equal access to unequal treatment", as in "all traffic is equal but some is more equal than others." The FCC will not be acting in a role as a "referee" at the network layer. Instead it will be an integral player in architecting what applications will get permission to "equal access" and which ones will not. This Administration State authority will assuredly formalize a regime against copyright/IP, and it presages an end to civilian administration of the internet. Moreover, the FCC is just another bureaucracy within a larger bureaucracy(the US Government) which is unquestionably the single greatest threat to a free and open internet. The US Government is single largest perpetrator of cybercrime, its military organs actively engaged in militarizing the internet, its security organs openly hostile to any possibility that any communication between any two parties can operate outside its knowledge of the contents of that communication.
Anyone who cares about free speech should shudder at the term "Lawful internet traffic" just as one would shudder at the expression the first amendment only applies to "lawful speech." As it stands, "net neutrality" equals censorship.
Slashdot Mirror
hmmm, what is "lawful" internet traffic and what is not? While the FCC may not be acting as a price setter, it will most definitely be acting as a market setter. The very term "net neutrality" is disingenuous crap to begin with. That conception of the internet embodied by the early RFCs(more or less a dumb network with the intelligence is distributed at the end points) died with the 1988 Morris worm. In practice, networks filter, and I doubt anyone would much tolerate a tier provider that didn't have a security filter regime in place. The question then is not net neutrality but one of supplanting a heuristic filtering regime with a formal one regulated by a rent-seeking game. This rent-seeking game is defined by "equal access to unequal treatment", as in "all traffic is equal but some is more equal than others." The FCC will not be acting in a role as a "referee" at the network layer. Instead it will be an integral player in architecting what applications will get permission to "equal access" and which ones will not. This Administration State authority will assuredly formalize a regime against copyright/IP, and it presages an end to civilian administration of the internet. Moreover, the FCC is just another bureaucracy within a larger bureaucracy(the US Government) which is unquestionably the single greatest threat to a free and open internet. The US Government is single largest perpetrator of cybercrime, its military organs actively engaged in militarizing the internet, its security organs openly hostile to any possibility that any communication between any two parties can operate outside its knowledge of the contents of that communication. Anyone who cares about free speech should shudder at the term "Lawful internet traffic" just as one would shudder at the expression the first amendment only applies to "lawful speech." As it stands, "net neutrality" equals censorship.