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The tech media still doesn’t understand the FCC’s net neutrality regulations

Sunday, March 22, 2015 22:10

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(Before It's News)

TND Guest Contributor: Yaël Ossowski |

EXPLAIN: A week after the FCC regulations on net neutrality have been released, the tech media is still pretty unsure about what they mean.

Since the Federal Communications Commission released its net neutrality regulationslast week, there have been some strange interpretations about what these rules mean for Internet consumers.

For instance, an article by Newsweek says the regulations will prohibit Internet service providers from limiting traffic based upon “commercial interests,” a phrase that never makes an appearance in the 400-page compendium of regulations released by the FCC on March 12.

Newsweek singles out “Comcast, Verizon and AT&T” as the likely culprits in this scenario, seemingly hell-bent on routing out network traffic that could put their “commercial” model in danger. But does this mean these companies are now providing public services?

Does the classification of ISPs as Title II public utilities mean they are no longer providing a product and service of a commercial nature, and it’s now strictly a public good to be regulated and allocated by the public sector?

This would surely go against the currently legal understanding of regulated public utilities, which are protected by governments to be monopolies.

Robert Litan, nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institute, the most well-known nonpartisan, nonprofit think tank in the world, says this is precisely why these regulations will “not only hurt on the ISPs, but could one day boomerang on certain major tech companies too.”

A post from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, one of the major players that advocated issuance of the regulations, finds plenty of fault with the FCC plan but still believes it was the right fit.

EFF claims it’s a “win for Team Internet,” presumably part of the slim 25 percent of Americans who even know what net neutrality is, according to a February poll released by the Progressive Policy Institute.

“We applaud the FCC for listening to Internet users and acting to protect the open Internet from unfair discrimination by mobile and wireline Internet service providers,”wrote EFF’s Kit Walsh.

Ars Technica, a bastion for tech news analysis, says the rules will ban ISPs from speeding up content “in exchange for payment,” again something not found in the regulations.

In the tech media, therefore, the situation presented is a dichotomy between ISPs determining which content is appropriate and the FCC itself.

This being the same FCC having demonstrated a propensity to bend to the will of the executive branch, if the latest rumored FCC inspector general investigation is to be believed, or even the biggest lobbyist.

In the FCC’s own words, these allow it to enforce the rules and play the Internet’s referee.

“The Internet is simply too important to allow broadband providers to be the ones making the rules,” said chairman Tom Wheeler before the net neutrality vote Feb. 26.

One of the most important parts of the FCC’s regulation hinges on the banned blocking of “lawful content,” leaving the independent agency with the power to decide what is unlawful or not.

Some analysts, however, view this as nothing more than an unnecessary intervention that will ultimately hurt those it was intended to protect.

They say it will create a situation where the winners and losers will be determined by their connections to Washington, not their ability to compete in the marketplace, favoring larger ISPs and firms to smaller start-ups.

“As such, success and failure will rely more on Silicon Valley’s sophistication in navigating and finessing the corridors of power than on new ideas and business acumen,” writes Christopher Yoo, professor of law at the University of Pennsylvania.

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Yaël Ossowski is a national investigative reporter for Watchdog.org. Contact him at [email protected] and on Twitter @YaelOss. Follow his written and video exploits as he defies international borders and keeps his pen busy on Yael.ca.

Watchdog.org is an online news organization that publishes articles by independent journalists covering state-specific and local government activity. The program began in September 2009, a project of Franklin Center for Government & Public Integrity, a 501(c)3 non-profit organization dedicated to promoting new media journalism. This article is reprinted with permission.