FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler
Tom Wheeler, Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, is now floating a
proposed new plan on net neutrality, one that would pay lip service to net neutrality advocates—and the millions of American consumers—who have called for reclassification of broadband, but would not extend protections on the consumer end of the internet.
The plan now under consideration would separate broadband into two distinct services: a retail one, in which consumers would pay broadband providers for Internet access; and a back-end one, in which broadband providers serve as the conduit for websites to distribute content. The FCC would then classify the back-end service as a common carrier, giving the agency the ability to police any deals between content companies and broadband providers. […]
The proposal would leave the door open for broadband providers to offer specialized services for, say, videogamers or online video providers, which require a particularly large amount of bandwidth. The proposal would also allow the commission to explore usage-based pricing at some point, in which consumers are charged based on how much data they use and companies are able to subsidize traffic to their websites or applications. […]
While the FCC still believes there should be room for such deals, its latest plan would shift the burden to the broadband providers to prove that the arrangements would be beneficial to consumers and equally available to any company that would like to participate. FCC officials believe reclassification would put them on much stronger legal footing to block such deals when they are anticompetitive.
In a nutshell, he's proposing a new classification for content creators, companies, and retail entities that would be under Title II. That reclassification would not ban paid prioritization—the idea of a tiered internet in which ISP could charge content producers more for better, faster delivery—which is by definition not real net neutrality. But worse, the consumer end of the internet won't get Title II protections at all. The internet service providers will be able to make deals with every "retail" or "content" website—like Daily Kos, or more to the point, the ISPs would be able to demand more money from sites like Daily Kos for decent delivery. That new internet category under Title II has also not been tested by any legal authority, so when the FCC is reportedly considering this as giving them stronger legal footing, it's not the case. And ISPs are already saying they'll challenge it if the FCC actually does try to regulate them under it.
One industry official admitted the hybrid plans could be more tolerable "at the margins," but predicted they would prompt the same legal challenge from the broadband providers as full reclassification.
Remember, this current debate over net neutrality is happening because the D.C. Circuit Court
ruled last January that the FCC didn't have the authority to stop Internet service providers from blocking or discriminating against websites or any other Internet traffic under the rules they were using. The court, however, made it clear that if the FCC chose to reclassify ISPs fully under Title II, its authority to do so would be perfectly clear and legal. That's exactly what the FCC needs to do.
This proposal from Wheeler once again fails to protect an open internet and all its users. It is going to receive the same legal challenge from ISPs as full Title II reclassification would. And rather than use case law precedent of Title II, Wheeler is choosing to make up entirely new, untested legal arguments which will most likely be struck down.
Sign and send a petition to President Obama urging the administration to push Chairman Wheeler to use Title II authority. Half measures are not good enough.