Are discussed in Inside Counsel at Net neutrality rules finally published:
The FCC adopted three basic protections intended to prohibit providers from discriminating against legal Internet traffic and enforce transparency:
“First, transparency: fixed and mobile broadband providers must disclose the network management practices, performance characteristics, and commercial terms of their broadband services,” the commission wrote. “Second, no blocking: fixed broadband providers may not block lawful content, applications, services, or non-harmful devices; mobile broadband providers may not block lawful websites, or block applications that compete with their voice or video telephony services. Third, no unreasonable discrimination: fixed broadband providers may not unreasonably discriminate in transmitting lawful network traffic.”
My take on the state’s imposition of “net neutrality” rules: Against Net Neutrality; Net Neutrality Developments; Libertarian Take on Net Neutrality; see also Harvard’s Yochai Benkler on Net Neutrality and Innovation; other posts on net neutrality. Bottom line: the idea that the state needs to protect us from the actions of private companies is just a smokescreen to hide the fact that the state itself gives these companies extra-market power in the first place by various state policies and laws such as FCC regulation of communications, IP law, and other policies; and that the state is the biggest threat to Internet freedom; of late it’s using the two-P’s–child porn and IP piracy–as an excuse to regulate the Internet. ((Re porn: British Historian On Porn And Internet Censorship: North Korea Is Right — The Internet Is Our Enemy; re piracy: Copyright and the End of Internet Freedom.)) How about the state impose net neutrality rules on itself, get out of the market and stop distorting it and giving companies oligopolistic powers that are prone to abuse (and that give the state an excuse to ride to the rescue and regulate to save us from a problem it created), and leave the free market alone?
