Just like the title says, ISPs are once again trying to take down net neutrality by claiming that because the Internet uses computers, it is not a telecommunications service, but rather an information service, which would make it subject to lighter regulation.
Internet service providers yesterday filed a 95-page brief (PDF) outlining their case that the Federal Communications Commission’s new net neutrality rules should be overturned.
One of the central arguments is that the FCC cannot impose common carrier rules on Internet access because it can’t be defined as a “telecommunications” service under Title II of the Communications Act. The ISPs argued that Internet access must be treated as a more lightly regulated “information service” because it involves “computer processing.”
“No matter how many computer-mediated features the FCC may sweep under the rug, the inescapable core of Internet access is a service that uses computer processing to enable consumers to ‘retrieve files from the World Wide Web, and browse their contents’ and, thus, ‘offers the ‘capability for... acquiring,... retrieving [and] utilizing... information.’ Under the straightforward statutory definition, an ‘offering’ of that ‘capability’ is an information service," the ISPs wrote.
Internet providers are now common carriers, and they're ready to sue. "If broadband providers provided only pure transmission and not information processing, as the FCC now claims, the primitive and limited form of 'access' broadband customers would receive would be unrecognizable to consumers," the ISPs also wrote. "They would be required, for example, to know the IP address of every website they visit. But, because Domain Name Service ('DNS') is part of Internet access, consumers can visit any website without knowing its IP address and thereafter 'click through' links on that website to other websites."
Since all of the ISPs are trying so hard to stop net neutrality, these laws are probably worth keeping on the books.
(Score: 4, Informative) by captain normal on Saturday August 01 2015, @07:20PM
"The ISPs argued that Internet access must be treated as a more lightly regulated “information service” because it involves “computer processing.”
This is a specious argument. The telcos have been using computer processing in telecommunications since at least the 1950s. Crossbar switching, arguably a type of computational processing, became common after WWII. In the 1950s packet transmission on toll and microwave transmissions required "computer processing". The cable companies from the beginning used processing to handle signals from receivers to the Head End to the distribution lines. With the advent of satellite transmission in the 1970s, virtually all distribution of television signals involved "computer processing".
When life isn't going right, go left.