Wetmachine » Tales of the Sausage Factory » The History of Net Neutrality In 13 Years of Tales of the Sausage Factory (with a few additions). Part I

Wetmachine » Tales of the Sausage Factory » The History of Net Neutrality In 13 Years of Tales of the Sausage Factory (with a few additions). Part I: "As I record in my first “Net Neutrality Primer” from 2006 , the FCC under Republican Chairman Michael Powell classified cable modem as an “information service.”

As the FCC Order described, this eliminated the mandatory rules governing Title II telecommunications services that governed things like phone lines and DSL lines. Importantly, however, the FCC did not relinquish authority and oversight over broadband (indeed, they called the accusation they were abandoning all oversight of broadband “fear mongering”).

This is rather important for those who keep asking the question “why do we need net neutrality now when everything was fine before 2015?” As demonstrated with links by this little walk down memory lane, until December 14 2017, we always had rules to prevent the companies that owned the lines from blocking, degrading or otherwise interfering with the broadband traffic. The idea that we needed entirely separate rules to prevent this behavior didn’t even become a thing until after the Cable Modem Declaratory Ruling." 'via Blog this'