I read Kevin
Drum’s take for Mother Jones on
Thursday morning. Apparently, the Wall
Street Journal is reporting the FCC has thrown in the towel on finding a
legal way to enforce equal access and is moving on to propose rules that
explicitly allow broadband suppliers to favor companies that pay them:
“The proposed rules would prevent the service providers from blocking or discriminating against specific websites, but would allow broadband providers to give some traffic preferential treatment, so long as such arrangements are available on ‘commercially reasonable’ terms for all interested content companies. Whether the terms are commercially reasonable would be decided by the FCC on a case-by-case basis.“…The FCC’s proposal would allow some forms of discrimination while preventing companies from slowing down or blocking specific websites, which likely won’t satisfy all proponents of new neutrality, the concept that all Internet traffic should be treated equally. The Commission has also decided for not against reclassifying broadband as a public utility, which would subject ISPs to much greater regulation. However, the Commission has left the reclassification option on the table at present.”
Naturally this means, some large corporations are going to pay for speedy
service, while others can’t compete, ‘Merica’s capitalist battle cry. We’re probably
looking at Netflix (obviously), Google, and probably Amazon will get great
speeds, and everyone else can use whatever is left. Of course Drum notes that
ISPs can’t deliberately slow down traffic (which has been suggested in the
past), but that is the last thing left from net neutrality. We’ve approved
two-tiered service, and we all know what that means. Those who can pay get good
service (usually at the exploitation of others), and those who can’t pay get
the shaft.
