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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: 3, Insightful) by takyon on Saturday August 01 2015, @08:11PM
Is anything stopping you from hosting your Web 1.0 style site? You can find or exploit free hosting (such as using Google Drive to host static web pages) or use your own server to host a site. Nothing is forcing you to use YouTube, photobucket, scribd, sourceforge, soundcloud, etc. but all of those platforms have value.
If you're complaining about popularity... the "old and real" internet wasn't that popular. If you're complaining about search results, you need to find someone who has curated some of these places, and do some curation yourself.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 01 2015, @11:11PM
Those platforms have value to ignoramuses who don't understand or don't care about how much the corporations are exploiting them and their data.
(Score: 2) by shortscreen on Sunday August 02 2015, @01:42AM
I HAVE my own web 1.0 site. The vast majority of people do not. When they want to share content, they are handing it over to the previously mentioned corporate middle men. Remember that line "you are not the customer, you are the product" that someone would post on the green site seemingly everyday? These people are products.
I don't follow.
This thread was about whether the internet will (or did already) fall victim to corporate greed. Poster Gravis implied that there is a part of the internet which is free of corporate greed, owing to the thoery that "anyone can host content." This is where I point out that, in practice, people are using these "free" hosting sites which are run by corporations for their own purposes, and this contradicts his point. For people to host their own content, they would need to pay extra for shared hosting or a non-crippled ("business class") internet connection. Most people do not. (No, Google Drive is not the same as hosting it yourself.)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 02 2015, @03:12PM
So what? Not everyone has the ability or interest in hosting their own site. If somebody doesn't want to host their own site, that's their choice. If they actually want their content viewed they'll definitely have it hosted at a popular site because there's no way to stumble onto somebody'd random website.