EFF, 7,000 Petitioners Urge FCC To Protect Net Neutrality

The Electronic Frontier Foundation yesterday submitted a petition to the United States Federal Communications Commission demanding the FCC fill a loophole in its internet regulations that could allow for internet filtering of allegedly copyright infringing content.

The petition accompanies a more extensive set of comments [pdf] on proposed FCC rules on internet neutrality, also sent to the FCC yesterday. The submission coincided with an FCC workshop on the future of media and information needs of communities in a digital age, held 4 March.

Also testifying at the workshop was the president of the Progress & Freedom Foundation, who said [pdf] expanding the FCC’s public interest regulation of the internet was “unwise, unneeded, unconstitutional, and unenforceable,” especially as what public interest means is inadequately defined.

The FCC’s proposed rules [pdf] “generally prohibit [internet service providers (ISPs)] from discriminating or blocking lawful content, but include a loophole for ‘reasonable network management,'” said an EFF press release, available here.

“Reasonable management” includes any measure an ISP takes to limit exchange of copyright-infringing content – but this, said the EFF, “effectively permit[s] ISPs to violate net neutrality rules and block lawful activities in the name of copyright enforcement. More than 7,000 people agreed with EFF’s assessment, and signed the petition to call for a change in the FCC proposed guidelines.

EFF further questioned whether the FCC has the “legal authority or political independence necessary to properly regulate” the internet.

Separately, the US State Department today held a meeting of its “NetFreedom Task Force,” involving 19 telecommunications and related technology companies. The task force is intended to combat threats to internet freedom, though it has not yet acknowledged the importance of anonymity to achieving that freedom (IPW, Information and Communications Technology, 22 February 2010). The task force will hold another meeting this summer for which non-governmental organisations and academics will also be invited said a US State Department release.