Harvard PR - we've heard of it but never hear from it
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EFF files petition to close FCC loophole
THE ELECTRONIC FRONTIER FOUNDATION (EFF) filed a petition yesterday protesting the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC) network neutrality loophole.
The EFF sent the petition with 7,000 signatures to the FCC, requesting that it close the network neutrality loophole. The EFF's full list of comments submitted to the FCC can be found here.
"Before the ink is dry on net neutrality regulations, we already see corporate lobbyists and 'public decency' advocates pushing for loopholes," said EFF Civil Liberties Director Jennifer Granick. "A loophole like this could swallow network neutrality, with ISPs claiming copyright enforcement as a pretext for all sorts of discriminatory behaviour."
The crux of the problem for the EFF is the FCC's "reasonable network management" loophole for ISPs in its proposed network neutrality regulations and the petition is the latest move in an ongoing battle.
We reported in January that the EFF was pushing the FCC to close the gaping legal exception in its draft network neutrality regulations. The exception could permit US ISPs to prevent all of their customers from using the Bittorrent protocol under cover of "reasonable network management" practices, as long as they can claim that those practices are intended to "prevent the unlawful transfer of content".
The EFF has a point. The terrible irony is that the loophole allows ISPs to violate the principles that the network neutrality regulations are supposed to be designed by the FCC to protect. µ
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FDA is the first one's department.
You know how laws were passed to REGULATE food companies to keep people from getting sick? The ones that say "Hey Meat Company, you can't take rotten meat, scrub it down with borax and sell it as "special" with a price premium anymore like you used to. Because that sucks."
Here the FDA is allowed to say: "Hey, internet company. You want to provide service, you provide it fairly to everybody, instead of using targeted restrictions on some people and companies just to try to fill your coffers with a little more money and censor out stuff you don't like."
It's REGULATION. And it's not a dirty word.
reason to have, -and pay for -high speed broadband is access to multimedia. If such access was removed, I can read my email just fine on dial-up. The ISPs are digging their own grave if they get involved with the copyright lawyers.
The FCC actually historically really likes vague terminology because it's they who want to feel powerful and make decision on their whim and mood, and be sucked up to in the hope they interpret things loosely, it's why their managers take the job, the powertrip.
So good luck with that EFF, haha bloody ha.
The whole reason the FCC talks neutrality is in a play to become the controller of the internet in the first place, you'd think the EFF would be familiar with all the BS and trickery.
You completely missunderstand what the law is intended to do, and what the EFF is arguing for. This appears to have caused you to go off on some tangent spewing BS.
"If the EFF pushes for regulation, they cannot take a principled stand against it."
Sure they can, because they aren't pushing for regulation at all. I herby douse your strawman argument in gasoline and set it a blaze.
It's embarrassing that the EFF is arguing for *more* Internet regulation. This kind of regulation should be an absolute last resort as it causes the United States to lose the high ground when other countries push for Internet regulation.
The next time China tries to use regulation to suppress Tibetan protesters or North Korea does the same, they will point to the fact that we also control by law what our ISPs carry.
Whatever the benefits of this law might be in the short term, the long term damage to our principled position of "use your network to carry whatever you want" will outweigh it.
And rest assured, the next time some horrible piece of Internet regulation is proposed, this will be cited as precedent. If the EFF pushes for regulation, they cannot take a principled stand against it.
"The terrible irony is that the loophole allows ISPs to violate the principles that the network neutrality regulations are supposed to be designed by the FCC to protect."
Lawyers spend a lot of time crafting these loophole clauses that completely subvert the stated purpose.
How many times must you see a pattern before you grasp that there's knowing intent behind it?
When billions are involved, details aren't left to chance.