So the "'net neutrality" rules every idiot is screaming for means that ISPs will be required to scan for and block this from being transmitted over their networks. Because it's not "lawful content".
but.that's.wrong.jpg
Net Neutrality is all about classifying the ISPs as what the other telecom and freight companies are: common-carriers.
Verizon, as a telephone company, doesn't censor "illegal" voice traffic, does it? They do not, last I checked. That's because Verizon is a common-carrier and is not held liable for telephone content over its wires. UPS is not held liable for a pound of weed being shipped through its system, either, because they are a common-carrier. Being held not liable is exchanged for the duty they have to not discriminate against customers and traffic for the common good.
Back in the day of the local BBS being your ISP, system operators could discriminate against abusive/disruptive/trolling users (we wanted that freedom, because resources were tight) being able to ban users/delete traffic. Because BBSes were classified as "information services" (as ISPs are classified right now), holding a kind of editorial power, we fought against common-carrier classification because it would have been onerous. But once a sysop exercised editorial power he/she was held liable for illegal/defamatory/copyright-infringing content hosted on the drives.
Like what happened to Rusty&Edie's.
ISPs have grown beyond the local BBS for well over a decade-and-a-half and ISPs are no longer "editorial." They have become common-carriers in everything but name, and the ISPs like TimeWarner/Cox/Comcast/Charter, etc, want to have their cake and eat it too - they want to be able to discriminate various kinds of traffic and retain editorial power while being not held liable for that traffic.
Sorry, no, they don't get to do that. They are now common-carriers and should be classified that way.
And that's what Net Neutrality is all about.
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BMO
