U.S. Net Neutrality Has a Massive Copyright Loophole

joelrunyon 11 years ago |

> “Nothing in this part prohibits reasonable efforts by a provider of broadband Internet access service to address copyright infringement or other unlawful activity.”

I think the word "reasonable" shouldn't be allowed when governing parties that consistently prove to act unreasonable :)

nickodell 11 years ago |

>“The language about ‘lawful’ content and applications creates a serious loophole that seems to leave it up to ISPs to make judgments about what content is lawful or infringes a copyright, subject to challenges after the fact about whether their conduct was ‘reasonable’,” Walsh says.

>“It’s one thing to say that ISPs can block subject to a valid court order, quite another to let ISPs make decisions about the lawfulness of content for themselves,” he adds.

Is it really practical to require a court order for each block?

jMyles 11 years ago | |

It's probably more practical to drop the pretense that this or any government 'regulation' is a sensible basis for a strong, free, and useful internet.

saidajigumi 11 years ago | | |

I'll bite. So what do you propose instead as a balance for the power and abuses of the likes of Comcast, Verizon, etc? Bonus points for a proposed approach has precedent in some other topic/venue of public policy.

nickodell 11 years ago | | |

(I'm not the guy you replied to.)

I think that the ISP's need some way to discriminate between different types of traffic. "All content should be treated equally," is a nice sentiment, but not all content is equally important. A VoIP call is more important than a file transfer.

I'm undecided whether the FCC should mandate that ISPs allow settlement-free peering. On one hand, the current system encourages companies to consolidate to gain more negotiating power. ("Oh, you don't want to pay to connect with our network? I guess you don't want to sell your products to 1/4 of America.") On the other hand, mandating SFP would decrease incentives to build long-range infrastructure, since you could just borrow it from someone else.

mindslight 11 years ago |

Duh. The current topic was fueled by a peering disagreement between two companies, fighting over who gets the bigger piece of the pie.

Nobody is ever going to give you change; you have to make it yourself.