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Comment by CamperBob | Hacker News Reader

(Shrug) If I vandalize a road sign, the highway department has the right to close the lane, replace the sign, and prosecute me for the act. They do not, however, get to sell the highway to a conglomerate that also owns a trucking company who will be charged lower tolls for driving on it.

That's all 'net neutrality' means, or should mean.

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That seems pretty similar to the language this proposal uses:

A broadband Internet access service provider would be prohibited from preventing users of its broadband Internet access service from--

(1) sending and receiving lawful content of their choice;

(2) running lawful applications and using lawful services of their choice; and

(3) connecting their choice of legal devices that do not harm the network or service, facilitate theft of service, or harm other users of the service

I have a problem with the "lawful" part, though -- it's not the business of the network operator to judge lawfulness.

Then what criteria would you use that includes everything reasonable, but excludes botnets, malware, dos attacks and the like?

The term usually used is "harmful content" (in the sense it hinders the network to function properly).

If it harms users other than the ones who left their systems unprotected, then it would be a good candidate for intervention. Neutrality shouldn't be a suicide pact for the ISP, but a set of operating guidelines that cover situations short of outright abuse and vandalism.

VoIP is content. SMTP/POP/HTML email is content. Do you want your ISP to monitor those to decide which are okay?

Discriminating against torrent traffic can be like racial profiling. A protocol is not an intent.

If you do want profiling, perhaps consumers running Windows should pay a higher fees and be given less bandwidth since those customers have higher support costs and have the machines most used for DDOS attacks, sending spam/scam and other foul behavior.

Windows machines harm the network. If a customer wishes to configure his router to share the bandwidth he's paid for, that's not theft of service. (Also read the F.C.C. notices included with U.S. routers - they don't own spectrum)

I don't know how you're getting any of that out of the proposal. All the proposal is saying is that if it's legal, the ISP can't block it. Nothing compels them to block illegal content, nor gives them any more right to do so than they already have.

You probably already know that the US is pushing other country to develop active filtering of internet during the negotiation of the ACTA treaty.

http://www.laquadrature.net/acta

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