EFF: A Lump of Coal in the Internet’s Stocking: FCC Poised to Gut Net Neutrality Rules
A Lump of Coal in the Internet’s Stocking: FCC Poised to Gut Net Neutrality Rules In a new proposal issued last week , the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) set out a plan to eliminate net neutrality protections, ignoring the voices of millions of Internet users who weighed in to support those protections . The new rule would reclassify high-speed broadband as an “information service” rather than a “telecommunications service” (remember, the FCC is forbidden from imposing neutrality obligations on information services ). It would then eliminate the bright-line rules against blocking, throttling, and pay-to-play (as well as the more nebulous general conduct standard) in favor of a simplistic transparency requirement. In other words, your ISP would be free to set itself up as an Internet gatekeeper, as long as it is honest about it. This is a bad idea for many, many reasons. Here are a few. Net Neutrality Has Been a Pillar of the Open Internet The FCC’s decision to gut net n...