[George]

it came back again! great blog post:

https://blog.cloudflare.com/a-return-to-us-net-neutrality-rules

[Natalie]

For anyone who has worked to help to build a better Internet, as Cloudflare has for the past 13 years, the reemergence of net neutrality is déjà vu all over again. Cloudflare has long supported the open Internet principles that are behind net neutrality, and we still do today. That’s why we filed comments with the FCC expressing our support for these principles, and concurring with many of the technical definitions and proposals that largely would reinstitute the net neutrality rules that were previously in place.
But let’s back up and talk about net neutrality. Net neutrality is the principle that ISPs should not discriminate against the traffic that flows through them. Specifically, when these rules were adopted by the FCC in 2015, there were three bright line rules: (1) that ISPs cannot block subscribers from reaching legal content, applications or services, (2) that ISPs cannot throttle subscribers’ access to content, putting some content in a “slow lane”, and (3) that ISPs can’t engage in “paid prioritization” which means charging websites and services for special access to their subscribers.
Net neutrality has a long history. In 2010, the FCC passed the first set of open Internet rules which were: (1) no blocking; (2) no unreasonable discrimination; and (3) transparency rules. In 2014, after a lawsuit from Verizon, the D.C. Circuit Court invalidated some of the 2010 rules, saying that if the FCC wanted to have these rules, it needed to treat ISPs as “common carriers.” (A common carrier is an entity that offers its services to the general public and will provide its services to anyone willing to pay the fee.) In 2015, the FCC did exactly that: it reclassified ISPs as common carriers, and instituted rules which we now know as net neutrality protections. In 2017, the FCC reversed course and repealed the rules. Now, the FCC again wants to reinstate them. It’s a dizzying chain of events.

[Donald]

Conservatives mocking Net Neutrality is the biggest self-own. I really can’t wrap my mind around how many GOP, MAGA shills thought it was a bad idea to require ISPs to treat all traffic fairly. It’s literally as libertarian as it gets, but these dumbasses keep mocking Net Neutrality like it’s a stupid idea

[Pamela]

Self-owning is the only thing that GOP can do, unfortunately.

[Author]

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