Pirate's Cove

This was always a bad solution in search of a problem. But, it’s also about the authoritarians gaining control over the Wild West Internet

Net Neutrality Returns to a Very Different Internet

The Federal Communications Commission has voted—once again—to assert its power to oversee and regulate the activities of the broadband industry in the United States. In a 3-2 vote, the agency reinstated net neutrality rules that had been abandoned during the height of the Trump administration’s deregulatory blitz.

“Broadband is now an essential service,” FCC chair Jessica Rosenworcel said Thursday in prepared remarks. “Essential services—the ones we count on in every aspect of modern life—have some basic oversight.”

Why? Things worked just fine prior to Obama’s leftist FCC enacting NN in 2015, and just fine after Trump’s freedom loving FCC killed it off in 2017. Is anyone complaining about the Internet being throttled, or any of the other issues NN is suppose to solve? No? Huh

The rules approved by the agency on Thursday will reclassify broadband services in the United States once more as “common carriers” under Title II of the Telecommunications Act, subjecting broadband to the same public-utilities-style scrutiny as telephone networks and cable TV.

That distinction means that the agency can prevent internet service providers from blocking or throttling legal content, or letting online services pay ISPs to prioritize their content with faster delivery speeds. But it’s difficult, particularly in an election year, to say whether net neutrality is here to stay or whether the FCC’s vote is just another inflection point in a regulatory forever-war.

NN makes Internet the same as a home phone, someone most people do not have anymore.

“Net neutrality rules protect internet openness by prohibiting broadband providers from playing favorites with internet traffic,” Rosenworcel says. “We need broadband to reach 100 percent of us—and we need it fast, open, and fair.”

Yet, there have been no issues with this since 2017 or before 2015. Weird, right?

Though banning the creation of “pay-to-play internet fast lanes” remains a priority, the reasons for reclassifying broadband are not limited to warding off the industry’s well-documented predatory practices. The new order also gives the FCC the ability to more closely examine industry behavior; how, for instance, companies respond (or fail to) in the event of widespread network outages.

In other words, the federal government is going to seriously be in the business of providers with all sorts of regulatory BS. Which can increase costs.

(ABC4) “The pandemic proved once and for all that broadband is essential,” FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel said Thursday. “After the prior administration abdicated authority over broadband services, the FCC has been handcuffed from acting to fully secure broadband networks, protect consumer data, and ensure the internet remains fast, open, and fair.”

Yeah, handcuffing the federal government from involving themselves unnecessarily on things that they do not need to regulate heavily simply because they want power that they did not have the statutory authority to involve themselves in is a good thing. And when the FCC applies the heavy hand of government and costs go up and development is stifled, don’t complain to the companies.

Scientific American has a pretty good explanation of why NN is not a positive. Too be honest, I’d have to go back and read up on this again, because I’ve forgotten most since I thought this issue was dead. But, Statists will never give up on ideas to increase state control.

Read: Statists On FCC Vote To Restore Obama Era Net Neutrality »