The FCC’s net neutrality rules are officially repealed today. Here’s what that really means.
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What's the impact of the repeal?
The end of the bans on blocking, slowing and paid prioritization means your Internet providers will be free to engage in that activity without legal repercussions, so long as they disclose it to the public on their own websites or to the FCC.
The repeal effectively narrows what the federal government would consider a net neutrality violation. Under the old policy, any blocking or slowing of websites would directly run afoul of the rules, inviting immediate enforcement. Under the new policy, a violation might occur when regulators find out that an Internet provider has been blocking websites without saying so. The new approach hands much of the responsibility for enforcing violations to the Federal Trade Commission, a sister agency. And in its repeal decision, the FCC explicitly rejects the idea that it has much authority to regulate Internet providers at all.
Is my Internet service about to slow to a crawl, as some activists claim?
Generally speaking, analysts say that specific scenario is pretty unlikely. Many Internet providers, such as AT&T and Verizon, have said they do not and will not block or slow content. Comcast has also said it does not block or slow content and has no plans to offer paid prioritization. Of course, these commitments could change in the future, and indeed, some close observers have noticed subtle shifts in Comcast's promises already. But the companies can't simply promise one thing and blatantly do another, at least not without risking FTC litigation.
The blocking and slowing of websites gets much of the attention in the net neutrality debate. But what's more likely to occur are subtle changes to your Internet experience that you may or may not notice. It's hard to say what specific changes you might experience; part of the whole point of undoing the net neutrality rules is that Internet providers will begin to experiment with business models we haven't seen before. One danger, according to consumer advocates, is that those new models could end up making it harder to discover innovative new services. Under this theory, you won't know what you're missing. But here are a few tactics that have been tried before that have drawn scrutiny under the old net neutrality rules.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2018/06/11/the-fccs-net-neutrality-rules-are-officially-repealed-today-heres-what-that-really-means/?utm_term=.079f7f73f4fa
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