As Donald Trump’s FCC gets set to kill Net Neutrality, lobbyists for the country’s telcos and cable operators are tucking in their napkins and picking up their cutlery, getting ready to feast.
As a way of hastening along the neutracidal moment, the Internet & Television Association (AKA National Cable Television Association) conducted a push-poll asking Americans if they wanted Net Neutrality killed right now, or straightaway (more or less).
But even within the shitty, stilted choices the poll offered, Americans still spoke overwhelmingly in favor of Net Neutrality, leaving Big Cable to desperately spin the outcomes to claim that Americans really wanted to have their internet connections slowed down unless they were accessing their ISPs’ preferred services.
But here’s the thing: “Regulating access to the Internet” isn’t at all what net neutrality is about. The law has nothing to do with choosing what you can access, or how, when, or where you can access it. The law has to do with your provider being required to provide you what you want to access, without blocking, throttling, degrading, or charging extra for it.Additionally, a system that “allows regulators to monitor the marketplace and take action if consumers are harmed” is exactly what we have right now. That’s what the Open Internet Order set up: By regulating ISPs under Title II of the law, the Commission has the authority to prevent a bunch of consumer harms. And it uses the general conduct rule — which is exactly the part of the Open Internet Order that ISPs hate the most — to monitor the marketplace and take action if consumers are harmed.
Even The Cable Lobby’s Questionable Survey Shows Most Americans Want Net Neutrality [Kate Cox/Consumerist]
(via /.)