Today the Federal Communications Commission met up to vote on whether or not to repeal the Barack Obama-enacted net neutrality regulations. The final vote came through to go ahead and repeal the legislation, so what does that mean to you – dear reader?
The removal of federal regulation on various internet service providers means that consumers are now exposed to things like internet speed throttling, piecemealing of features that used to be included in your main internet bill, and so on. It’s hard to pinpoint what could happen with the lack of regulation, but here we are.
One of the key rules being repealed is one that bars internet providers from favoring their own content over competitors – like if Comcast were to slow down the speeds of users streaming content from Netflix on a Comcast internet connection. Without this restriction, ISPs will have to publicly disclose any throttling of services to their consumers (that is if they do that or not).
Alongside the move to repeal the regulations is the FCC noting they’re teaming up with the Federal Trade Commission to only step in when a broadband provider is actively deceiving their customers. So, in theory, if an ISP is throttling your service but they tell you they’re throttling your service, they’re in the clear.
It’s hard to pinpoint exactly what the repercussions of a lack of regulation or an overly regulated internet will do for all of us internet-goers. The hope many of us have is that common sense legislation would be enacted to block foul practices like mentioned above while also not stepping on the toes of businesses, or consumers.
Many critics of what we knew as “net neutrality” saw it as a form of over-regulation from the fed, and that it was crony-capitalism that targeted the competitors of massive corporations like Google, and Facebook. Despite the focus on the naming of the law(s), net neutrality also didn’t protect the First Amendment on things like social media, which the original laws never addressed.
Regardless, FCC chairman Ajit Pai stressed that the move to repeal the regulations was to revert the oversight of the internet back to its pre-2015 shift, where the FCC and FTC act more as an overseer and not a direct judge over everything – like they have been since the invention of the internet.
What are your thoughts on net neutrality and the current state of the internet? Should we have more federally-regulated mandates like in the Obama-era legislation, or should we just roll the dice and see what happens? Maybe new legislation should be enacted to replace and address these issues? Sound off in the comments below.
