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Comment by AndrewHampton | Hacker News Reader

I hope you're correct and deep packet inspection is prohibited. The language being used still concerns me though.

> If a consumer requests access to a website or service, and the content is legal, your ISP should not be permitted to block it.

This implies that ISPs would be permitted to block illegal content. How can they know traffic is legal without some form of traffic monitoring/inspection?

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Going from the court decisions, they would know that traffic is illegal if a court tells them it's illegal. Again, refer to People v. Brophy: the common carrier is not "authorized or required" to investigate. Probably meaning they can aid in investigation (e.g., supply information to police) but not perform an investigation (analyze said information themselves).

In addition, Title II would probably put internet traffic on the same level as wiretaps in terms of (non-DHS) data snooping. If anything, it would give internet users more protection for this sort of thing than they are granted now.

If a court decides it is illegal, they would need to tell an ISP to block... what? An IP address? Or the content?

If the former, we have issues because IP addresses are transient. If the latter, we have issues because that would require deep packet inspection.

It would probably be a specific url. Or an entire domain for something like a site dedicated to illegal gambling. Though why they wouldn't just go after the website to take it down like they do currently eludes me.

Pretty much. If it's hosted in the US, they'll take it down. If it's not, they'll do pretty much whatever they can ... which boils down to seizing the domain. Usually with the kinds of sites people are typically worried about USGOV taking down, they leave up ... and watch the traffic. It's like in The Wire - they don't want the criminal's site (cell phone) to go down when they're watching the connections it's making.

Title II combined with the 2nd amendment actually prevents things like The Great Firewall :)

And deep packet inspection is pretty easy to get around with some rudimentary encryption technologies.

Usenet is a common carrier service. However, they do make content inaccessible if there's a takedown request for copyright. But they don't filter anything that gets uploaded or block your downloads.

i don't think usenet is a common carrier service. if it were, it would be illegal to block or prohibit access to it... and currently a lot of ISP's explicitly block access to usenet.

I've never seen an ISP block usenet. I've seen ISPs stop hosting their own free Usenet servers, but that's not blocking Usenet.

I'm searching for an adequate source for this information but I'm failing to find anything to stand on its own. It's definitely been treated like common carrier for many years, but as for an official classification... I'm struggling to find one.

Do they actually block it? I thought the issue was that ISPs stopped hosting usenet servers for their users. You can still access usenet hosted somewhere else.

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