The FCC is combining several separate sections of telecommunications
law developed for radio, cable TV and broadband access for a regulatory
takeover of the Internet and is enforcing it with the same rules and
methods as the Justice Department, according to its 400-page report released Thursday.The agency is going to regulate the Internet like broadcast radio and
television through a patchwork of telecommunications laws which were
developed not only separately of each other but also in different
decades.
“We ground the open Internet rules we adopt today in multiple sources
of legal authority – Section 706, Title II and Title III of the
Communications Act [of 1934],” page 120 of the 400-page FCC report
states.
But what are these statues? Here’s a quick breakdown:
Section 706, Broadband Internet Regulation and Access, of the Telecommunications Act of 1996Title II, Common Carrier Regulations of the Communications Act of 1934Title III, Broadcast Station Requirements of the Communications Act of 1934
We already knew the FCC was reclassifying Internet Service Providers as “common carriers” under Title II regulations developed in 1934, but the agency is also invoking the regulatory frameworks created for broadcast radio and television stations under Title III and for “Internet broadband services” under Section 706 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996.
The FCC is claiming jurisdiction over the Internet by cherry picking existing regulations and combining them into new authority.
Section 706 in particular grants the FCC and its state commissions
“with regulatory jurisdiction over telecommunications services” under
the guise of improving “advanced telecommunications capability to all
Americans.”
This section allows the FCC to utilize “price cap regulations” and
“measures that promote competition in the local telecommunications
market,” i.e. de facto favoritism toward select interest groups.
In other words, the government, not the free market, makes the decisions over broadband access.
But what does the FCC plan on doing with these regulations? Well, many current and former members of the FCC were members of a leftist organization called Free Press and through the group they advocated draconian restrictions placed on the Internet.
For example, the FCC’s former chief diversity officer, Mark Lloyd, co-authored a 2007 report calling for the regulation of political talk radio by limiting free speech on AM and FM stations under the guise of “balanced radio programming,” i.e. a fairness doctrine.
“While progressive talk is making inroads on commercial stations,
conservative talk continues to be pushed out over the airwaves in
greater multiples of hours than progressive talk is broadcast,” the
report stated, oversimplifying politics into a false left/right
paradigm. “These empirical findings may not be surprising given general
impressions about the format, but they are stark and raise serious
questions about whether the companies licensed to broadcast over the
public airwaves are serving the listening needs of all Americans.”
Media mogul Mark Cuban was proven right when he said the feds would **** the Internet up.
Below is an article from RT breaking down other sections of the FCC’s 400-page takeover plan:
FCC outlines net neutrality rules in 400-page report: 5 things you need to know
The Federal Communications Commission on Thursday published a
400-page report containing the open internet rules that the agency’s
panel moved to adopt last month in a 5-3 vote hailed as a victory by net
neutrality advocates.
The report, the FCC says, “once and for all…puts into place strong,
sustainable rules, grounded in multiple sources of our legal authority,
to ensure that Americans reap the economic, social and civic benefits of
an open Internet today and into the future.”
Want to know what that means, but without wrapping your brain around
the report’s 270,000 or so words? We’ve outlined a few key takeaways to
help explain the FCC’s latest release.
No blocking
The FCC says that strong rules are required in order to protect
consumers against past and potentially future tactics that would
threaten the existence of an open internet, and first on the agency’s
list is a “no blocking” provision. As one might expect, this rule
prohibits internet service providers, or ISPs, from keeping customers
from accessing content that isn’t against the law.
“A person engaged in the provision of broadband Internet access
service, insofar as such person is so engaged, shall not block lawful
content, applications, services or non-harmful devices, subject to
reasonable network management,” the FCC says.
In other words, an ISP, such as Comcast or Verizon, for example,
can’t take action to keep ordinary customers away from certain websites
(or stop them from downloading certain movies or music, for that
matter), unless the content in question and the act of obtaining it is
otherwise illegal. So while the new rules prohibit ISPs from blocking
access to blogs that might be critical of their corporations, web
service providers can still take action if a customer is somehow caught
downloading illegal content.
“[T]he no-blocking rule only applies to transmissions of lawful
content and does not prevent or restrict a broadband provider from
refusing to transmit unlawful material, such as child pornography or
copyright-infringing materials. We believe that this approach will allow
broadband providers to honor their service commitments to their
subscribers without requiring a specified level of service to those
subscribers or edge providers under the no-blocking rule,” the agency
says.
Throughout the report, the FCC notes that, notwithstanding rules such
as the “no blocking” provision, certain custodial efforts (or
“reasonable network management”) might affect access to the internet. As
long as the management is reasonable, however, the FCC says it will
find no fault.
No throttling
Similarly, the FCC’s new rules also say that internet providers can’t
decide to speed-up and slow-down the delivery to customers of online
content at an ISP’s own discretion. Adding to open internet rules
adopted by the FCC starting in 2010 (and enforced up until a federal
court judge told them otherwise, eventually paving way for the release
of this report nearly a half-decade later), the agency says this no
throttling rule means ISPs can’t “degrade lawful Internet traffic on the
basis of Internet content, application or service, or use of a
non-harmful device, subject to reasonable network management.”
“Degrading access to legal content and services can have the same
effect as blocking and will not be permitted,” reads a portion of this
week’s report.
According to the FCC, “the ban on throttling is necessary both to
fulfill the reasonable expectations of a customer who signs up for a
broadband service that promises access to all of the lawful Internet,
and to avoid gamesmanship designed to avoid the no-blocking rule by, for
example, rendering an application effectively, but not technically,
unusable.”
“With the no-throttling rule, we ban conduct that is not outright
blocking, but inhibits the delivery of particular content, applications
or services, or particular classes of content, applications or
services.”
Once again, though, illegal content isn’t covered by the FCC’s “no
throttling” provision, meaning the agency’s new rules won’t stop ISPs
from adjusting the connection speeds of customers caught sharing
copywrited material, as RT previously reported.
No paid prioritization
Ahead of the FCC’s decision last month to adopt the rules released in
this week’s report, a hot topic among commentators watching the debate
was whether the agency would allow for paid prioritization; that is,
whether ISPs should be able to cut deals with content creators in which
the delivery of web traffic, specifically with regards to the speed,
could differ depending on how much those content creators chose to pay.
“Paid prioritization occurs when a broadband provider accepts payment
(monetary or otherwise) to manage its network in a way that benefits
particular content, applications, services or devices,” the FCC says,
and allowing for it would indeed enable the creation of “fast lanes”
feared by net neutrality advocates.
“To protect against ‘fast lanes,’ this Order adopts a rule that
establishes that: A person engaged in the provision of broadband
Internet access service, insofar as such person is so engaged, shall not
engage in paid prioritization,” reads another one of the FCC’s new
rules.
Along with no blocking and no throttling, the FCC says this this
provision is one of three “clear, bright-line rules” necessary to
preserve net neutrality.
Well, almost no paid prioritization
Yet while paid prioritization and “fast lanes” became a central
argument to the net neutrality debate, the FCC has included language in
its report that doesn’t outright ban that concept 100 percent. According
to the FCC, the ban on paid prioritization may be waived “only if the
petitioner demonstrates that the practice would provide some significant
public interest benefit and would not harm the open nature of the
Internet.”
In order to demonstrate as much, the FCC says that the applicant
“must demonstrate that the practice will have some significant public
interest benefit,” and explain how it wouldn’t harm the concept of net
neutrality.
According to the rules, “An applicant seeking waiver relief under this rule faces a high bar.”
“We anticipate granting such relief only in exceptional cases,” wrote the commissioned.
Regulations won’t restrict law enforcement
Speaking of exceptional cases, the FCC made sure to include language
in this week’s report that reiterates the importance of ensuring
authorities can bypass open internet protections adopted through the
ruling for the sake of law enforcement operations.
“The record is generally supportive of our proposal to reiterate that
open Internet rules do not supersede any obligation a broadband
provider may have – or limit its ability – to address the needs of
emergency communications or law enforcement, public safety, or homeland
or national security authorities,” the FCC says. According to the
report, broadband providers have obligations under statutes such as the
Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA), the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and the Electronic Communications
Privacy Act (ECPA) that “could in some circumstances intersect with open
Internet protections,” given that access must always be prioritized “in
order to coordinate disaster relief and other emergency response
efforts, or for other emergency communications.”
“Most commenters recognize the benefits of clarifying that these
obligations are not inconsistent with open Internet rules” the FCC says.
Privacy advocates have raised questions in recent years about the
scope of laws like CALEA, FISA and ECPA, however, especially given
statements from government officials concerning ways in which
authorities may rely on certain legislation to conduct online
eavesdropping.
RT reported at the time that a Justice Department attorney said in
2013 that the government wants to use CALEA to monitor the online
conversations of suspected criminals in real time, and disclosures that
same year from former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden revealed
that the government uses Section 702 of FISA to authorize digital
surveillance on foreign persons – the likes of which, tech experts have
argued, has involved exploiting security weaknesses on behalf of the
government and, as a result, secretly undermining the protocols meant to
protect online activity. 4951