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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: 2) by bzipitidoo on Saturday August 01 2015, @08:56PM
To strike it down hard, perhaps the telecoms should be counter-sued for frivolous litigation.
More than that, the telecoms should be broken up, or regulated more, or nationalized. What they are doing is abusing their monopoly power. If they weren't big monopolies, they wouldn't even be trying this crap.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 01 2015, @10:57PM
Let's say this did happen, they were broken up. Do you recall what happened last time they were broken up?
It would happen again. It would start with backroom deals, unofficial and off-the-books, allowing the CEOs of each of the small companies to arrange illegal agreements... power is power, money is money, and they seek each other out like you wouldn't imagine.
(Score: 2) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Saturday August 01 2015, @11:21PM
Let's say this did happen, they were broken up. Do you recall what happened last time they were broken up?
It would happen again. It would start with backroom deals, ...
So that leaves more regulation and nationalisation as our options. Time to try the former and, if it doesn't work well enough, follow up with the latter .
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Sunday August 02 2015, @06:17AM
The nice part is we already have an air tight reason for doing so, the massive fraud of the telecos in stealing 200 billion from the American people [pbs.org] for a nationwide broadband rollout which we never got. Instead what we got for our $200 billion was massive bonuses to CEOs and a low res Goatse in return!
That bullshit has pissed me off for years because as some here may know I've been fighting 20 damned years to get high speed run to my mother's house. the lines were a block and a half when she built her home, how far were they at the first of this year? If you said a block and a half you're winnar! In fact neither cable nor DSL has moved an inch in the 20 years I've been fighting them, both having cherry picked the neighborhoods they wanted and left the rest to rot. Its led to all kinds of fucked up situations like apt buildings that are nicer going for half the price of crappy ones simply because the high speed is only on the side of the street where the crappy ones are, its just a fucking mess.
But I'm happy to say after 20 years of fighting I'm finally gonna be moving in to that 3 bedroom I've left sitting for over a decade next to mom's while having high speed, how did I do it? I'm proud to say by being a sneaky little fucker, that's how! I found out from a lineman friend that one of the managers at the local cableco had put his wife in a cushy secretary job at the front desk and was miserable because she is a "townie" and the rest of the girls there are all in the same sorority so exclude her. All I had to do was send the wife to buddy up to her and I got the lines run for the $2500 the lines actually cost instead of the $15k "installation cost" they have been quoting me, along with a free home theater install for the manager's wife of course. I'm even getting a grand of that back in free cable TV and net for a year.
Isn't it sad that 20 years after we paid for nationwide broadband the only way I could get it run a lousy block and a half is good old fashioned bribery?Oh well, the wife is happily picking out paints and I'm gonna finally have that music studio I've always wanted, but I can't help but feel sorry for all those that don't have insider knowledge and know how to manipulate the system, because it'll be a cold day in hell before they ever get a line run around here. Oh and some will be happy to know I'm not a cold hearted bastard (or at least I'm not married to one) who left the manager's wife to suffer just because I got what I want, she and the wife hit it off and so they go out to lunch a couple times a month to gossip and let the manager's wife talk shit about the "stuck up college bitches" she works with. She's happy, the wife is happy, its just a shame that in 2015 there are still places where you can literally see the lines from your front door and not get any service without playing the system.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 3, Funny) by tangomargarine on Sunday August 02 2015, @07:55AM
Instead what we got for our $200 billion was massive bonuses to CEOs and a low res Goatse in return!
I demand my goatse is of a higher resolation! This a travesty, I say, A TRAVESTY!!!1
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 02 2015, @03:21PM
Duh, they're businesses not charities. They're not going to do anything that would not make them money, and they'll especially never do anything that would cause them to lose money, like run lines to poor areas.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 02 2015, @03:18PM
The US is run by Capitalists (with a capital "C", those with capitalism as their religion, who worship dogma and ignore facts), and they'll never allow regulation or especially nationalization. Free markets can't exist without regulation keeping them free, but Capitalists don't want free markets, they want more money, more power, and more control. That requires them to continue deregulating everything they can and every opportunity.