The "Party Line" in TFA is the same "party line" of Slashdot: The FCC is tramples technological freedoms. They tell you what you can and cannot air on TV, they fine you when they think they see anything resembling a nipple (even in scrambled video), they tell you what you can and cannot use a telephone for, they lock down what devices you can connect to your wireless carrier with, they tell you when and when you can't record broadcast television. The list goes on and on.

Then to top it all off, the FCC decides it's going to start making and enforcing rules about Internet providers, without citing any prior problems, and we're supposed to roll over and believe them? Shoudn't they at least point to an ongoing violation and say "That's something we want to fix!"?

Shouldn't Congress, who is at least elected, be kind of wary that the FCC, unelected, is usurping their power here? Read the definitions, the Internet is plainly an Information Service; and in any event, an executive department is supposed to be enforcing rules, not writing them. Common law doesn't allow for the interoperation of the law to "change" on political whims: if the law was wrong before, it was always wrong. (This is why the courts can rule censorship laws unconstitutional, and retroactively so.)

Shouldn't we be just as concerned over who and how the rules are enforced, just as much as the rules themselves?

They're supposed to do that: The highest authority in the US are the state governments.

Local municipalities are formed by and subordinate to the state government, unless otherwise defined under the terms of the respective state's charters.

Likewise, Federal government was formed by and is subordinate to the state governments, within the confines and requirements as specified in the Constitution.

If in my universe, the only people who were both critical of the unchecked expansion of government power and welcoming of basic Internet engineering principles all at the same time, were those who were paid, I might reach the same conclusion.

Reality check, though: We're not in your universe anymore.

I don't get paid to post on Slashdot, and I doubt anyone else does, but even if I did, that doesn't justify a smear campaign.

You can repeat yourself all you want, it doesn't make it true.

Did you bother to read my link?

The Communications Decency Act of 1996 (CDA), also known by some legislators as the "Great Cyberporn Panic of 1995", was the first notable attempt by the United States Congress to regulate pornographic material on the Internet. In 1997, in the landmark cyberlaw case of Reno v. ACLU, the United States Supreme Court struck the anti-indecency provisions of the Act.

Need any more citations?

You say you have hundreds of examples, yet you have yet to name one example. Just one example that the FCC rules would have stopped.

Just one.

Go on, I'm waiting.

Shill.

Let's play a game.

One is "Telecommunications service" and one is "Information service". But I removed the actual term from the definition, and randomized the order at the flip of a coin.

So which one describes the Internet?

...
                            `($A) $ABC - The term `$ABC' means the offering of
                            telecommunications for a fee directly to the public, or to such
                            classes of users as to be effectively available directly to the
                            public, regardless of the facilities used.'.

                                `($D) $DEF - The term `$DEF'
                            means the offering of a capability for generating, acquiring,
                            storing, transforming, processing, retrieving, utilizing, or
                            making available information via telecommunications, and
                            includes electronic publishing, but does not include any use of
                            any such capability for the management, control, or operation
                            of a telecommunications system or the management of a
                            telecommunications service.

So does the Internet fall under section $A, or section $D?

Is it the Court's job to make you happy, or is it the court's job to uphold the law, including the constitution, which has a pretty strongly worded provision against laws about speech?

And how in the world is giving money to someone, or paying for an advertisement, "corruption"?

What part of no law have I not made sufficiently clear? Individual, corporation, union, robot, it doesn't matter who's affected. If it chills speech, it's unconstitutional, period, end of discussion.

Newsflash: Those particular protectionist laws were repealed. The authority is still there, and Title II still tends to protect big corporations over the general welfare. Including the FCC's actions on the ISPs.

Are you seriously trying to tell me the government has never tried to censor anything, nothing on the Internet?

And you're trying to tell me they've never tried to censor any part of a telecommunications service?

Well sorry to burst your bubble, the Telecommunications Act of 1996 has an entire section on censorship of sexually explicit materials:

TITLE V--OBSCENITY AND VIOLENCE

`(a) Whoever--
                                `(1) in interstate or foreign communications--
                                        `(A) by means of a telecommunications device knowingly--
                                                `(i) makes, creates, or solicits, and
                                                `(ii) initiates the transmission of,
                                    any comment, request, suggestion, proposal, image, or other
                                    communication which is obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy,
                                    or indecent, with intent to annoy, abuse, threaten, or
                                    harass another person;
                                        [...]
                    shall be fined under title 18, United States Code, or imprisoned
                    not more than two years, or both.';

You were saying?

If that were the case, then Congress wouldn't have a law that says "Here's a description of one type of commerce, you get $amount_of_authority over it. And here's a description of another type of commerce, and you get $substantially_more_amount_of_authority over it."

If they can just always pick the latter, why even bother describing the former, and the subset of authority that goes with it? The FCC has zero self-interest in regulating its power.

You'll need to provide a citation, but in any event, the FCC would have been incorrect, as it is now.

Wikipedia provides a nice write-up of the state of affairs since the Telecommunications Act of 1996:

If the FCC successfully claims that the Internet is a Title II service (it's not), then besides being blatantly dishonest, they also get the authority to censor the Internet and impose draconian rules like they did on the PSTN.

e.g. did you know it was illegal to plug your own phone into the PSTN? Welcome to Title II.

With Title II Internet, the FCC has done nothing and opened the door to great harm in the future, all at once.

GP said the FCC doesn't censor, I called them out. Case closed.

If you want to argue the FCC won't censor the Internet, well the FCC just answered that:

... Shall not block lawful content

lawful content? I don't remember any such stipulation before. How about saying goodbye to Wikileaks? The Pirate Bay?