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Comment by sschueller | Hacker News Reader

The phrase "lawful content" occurs 32 times.

"No-Blocking. First, we adopt a bright-line rule prohibiting broadband providers from blocking lawful content, applications, services, or non-harmful devices."

So I guess that means they can block thepiratebay.com, wikileaks or any content congress deems unlawful.

Couldn't these new rules be applied to the Chinese internet and nothing would change? The great firewall only filters what is not lawful.

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This gets brought up on HN whenever these rules get mentioned. The point is that the FCC cannot stop ISPs from blocking unlawful content. If an ISP is under some other obligation to block unlawful content these FCC rules cannot overrule that.

That's really all that's going on. By using the term 'lawful content' the FCC is limiting the scope of their rules, nothing more.

Your post makes sense and I don't wanna make it sound like I'm disagreeing with you but can't this be used as a launching point by congress to start deeming new internet content as unlawful?

Congress does not need a launching point from the FCC; Congress can pass whatever law they want, whenever they want. It might later be found to be unconstitutional, but until then it will be the law.

Congress can overrule the FCC; the FCC cannot overrule Congress. That's why the "lawful" language in FCC rules does not matter much.

Exactly right.

snowwrestler gets it right, but imagine if the FCC didn't have this language? What would happen if Congress or the courts ruled traffic as unlawful and mandated ISPs to block it?

The ISPs would be stuck in a jam. Either they run afoul of the FCC by blocking it, or they could run afoul of some court by not blocking it. We need clear rules.

With the exception of things like TV and radio, there's little precendent for the FCC telling operators what they can rebroadcast. This 'unlawful' language is the FCC's way of not addressing the issue at all. They're not defining what 'unlawful' means intentionally because it's not part of their Congressional mandate.

The federal divisions are supposed to fight. That is the point of balance of power. A unified government is a tyrannous one.

Be on the wrong side of the law no matter what is not freedom it is tyranny.

It's the other way around. Not having this language would give courts a good reason overturn the rule.

> Your post makes sense and I don't wanna make it sound like I'm disagreeing with you but can't this be used as a launching point by congress to start deeming new internet content as unlawful?

Insofar as Congress power under the Constitution to pass laws declaring material (whether or not it is on the internet) unlawful, this regulatory action neither expands nor constrains that power. And, in fact, Congress has plenty of laws in place which make content (including internet content) unlawful.

All this does is applies non-blocking and other rules which do not apply to any content which is unlawful. It doesn't, in any way, effect what content is unlawful, or what content might become unlawful in the future.

> So I guess that means they can block thepiratebay.com or any content congress deems unlawful.

Yes, but it's hardly surprising. The point of the FCC net neutrality rules is not to protect Americans from the censorship by US government -- FCC simply has no power to do that. These rules are there to protect Americans from the censorship by ISP companies.

How "lawful content" is determined and how liberal they are at blocking is the real question.

Obviously sites like thepiratebay.se will be censored, but how about, say, torrentfreaks?

I continue to believe that none of this will be an issue if we continue to push encryption.

> Obviously sites like thepiratebay.se will be censored

What? No they won't. Comcast/Verizon/No one is going to block sites for their customers on the Internet. They don't today, and they won't tomorrow.

Except child porn. That shit gets blocked and will continue to get blocked, regularly. But that's about it.

>That shit gets blocked and will continue to get blocked

Does it? I'm unaware of any legally binding or ISP level blocking of this sort in the US.

Honestly neither am I but I know the one exception to freedom (and for good reason) in the US is child porn.

> the one exception to freedom (and for good reason)

No matter how odious the predicate to such a statement may be, I can't get behind it.

To be fair to myself, I only said there was a good reason, I didn't specifically say the conclusion was good.

I wouldn't be so quick to assume that ISPs in the US won't go above and beyond the "call of duty" now, or in the near future. ISPs in the UK [1] and Denmark [2] have already shown willingness to do more than what is legally required of them in order to appease the government or copyright interest groups. What makes Verizon or Comcast different from those ISPs?

[1] http://torrentfreak.com/sky-broadband-starts-blocking-pirate... [2] https://torrentfreak.com/isps-agree-voluntary-pirate-site-bl...

If you have broadband from Sky, you are knowingly using a content company for your Internet provider, rather than a company that actually makes its money on providing Internet access. You don't have to do that here, unlike the US. It's very much your own fault for using such a service.

I agree that that seems like a bad choice, or at a minimum, one is choosing to do business with a company that has to internally negotiate an apparent conflict of interest. (Or, vertical integration if one has a generous take on the situation.) I am not so familiar with the layout of ISPs in the UK, but if other choices than Sky are present in a given locale, then, yes, the choice (I would make) is clear.

However, how does the Sky situation differ from the Comcast (content delivery) / NBCUniversal (content production) relationship? Verizon, AT&T, and TWC, as far as I can tell, are only content delivery services. I don't have specific statistics on hand, but I assume that for some people in the United States, Comcast is (unfortunately) the only viable broadband service provider.

What are you smoking, and will you share? Most people in the US can chose from one or two of the handful of large ISPs - Comcast, TWC, AT&T, and Verizon. The Lucky ones can choose between two or three of them, many only have one real option.

All four of those ISPs are content providers - hell, you the Triple-Play is a thing precisely because they all sell subscription TV services as well as internet and voice...

> I wouldn't be so quick to assume that ISPs in the US won't go above and beyond the "call of duty" now, or in the near future.

An exception to a new non-blocking rule is not the same thing as a new rule requiring blocking. Particularly, in the absence of the new rules, there was no prohibition on ISPs blocking content (lawful or unlawful), and anything done with the excuse of blocking unlawful content (e.g., blocking all BitTorrent traffic) which also blocked lawful content was allowed. But now, even if blocking unlawful content is the excuse, if a policy blocks lawful content, there will be a basis for challenging it. This increases the legal risk to ISPs of policies for which they might deploy the excuse of "blocking unlawful content" beyond what the legal risk was (practically zero) before the Order was adopted.

So, I'd say it decreases the risk of ISPs trying to appease anyone, government or otherwise, blocking.

Your reply is encouraging. By the tone of the replies I've gotten it sounds like the censorship will not be applied liberally at all, but I'm glad this is not the case.

> Obviously sites like thepiratebay.se will be censored,

This is not obvious. Visiting the site is not against the law. I don't believe it hosts any unlawful content.

I'm sure there are a few links on the HN front page that break one law or another.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought that unlawful activity existed outside of the law, anyway.

Meaning, if (for example) I sell you heroin, you can't sue me in small claims court saying that I cut it with baby laxatives and therefore you demand your money back.

If that's how things work, then if Comcast were to block a child porn site, the child porn site couldn't take Comcast to court over it and expect to win. Regardless of any net neutrality laws.

http://definitions.uslegal.com/c/clean-hands-doctrine/

Yes but say you're a torrenting site that allows users to upload their original content to distribute and ISPs block your traffic because they think all torrents are illegal. Then you'd care a lot about that clause.

Presumably if Comcast was blocking your perfectly legal torrents, then net neutrality would come into play.

The FCC can't force them to serve unlawful content, that would be forcing them to break the law.

That's a bit of a stretch. China doesn't have a 1st Amendment

Well, DPRK says "[People] also have freedom of speech, the press, assembly, demonstration and association, freedom of religious beliefs and they are entitled to submit complaints and petitions." [1]

[1] http://korea-dpr.com/citizen.html

What a government says and what the law that created the government says are two different things.

Okay, maybe not for DPRK, but still.

A) congress typically doesn't dictate what is lawful, that's for a judge. Congress just writes the laws.

B) wouldn't this imply that ISPs now need to demonstrate that it's unlawful to block it?

The executive branch has the ability to define lawful when congress provides them leeway to do so. thats exactly what these rules are about. so that's an important qualifier I would think. All three branches of government dictate what is lawful (at different levels of abstraction).

Was there any expectation that this wouldn't be the case?

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