The FCC really started pushing for net neutrality in the Bush administration.
In 2005, the Madison River Telephone company (now Lumen/CenturyLink) blocked Vonage from using its networks and the FCC stepped in to stop them. They then established 4 principles of an Open Internet:
Consumers deserve access to the lawful Internet content of their choice.
Consumers should be allowed to run applications and use services of their choice, subject to the needs of law enforcement
Consumers should be able to connect their choice of legal devices that do not harm the network.
Consumers deserve to choose their network providers, application and service providers, and content providers of choice.
In 2009, they overtly added the principle of non-discrimination, and in 2010 they made the principles official with the Open Internet Order.
Comcast sued and got the order thrown out, so they started the prices of reclassifying broadband, and the fight reached fever pitch in 2014 when it looked like the FCC was finally going to win for us.
But between 2012 and 2016, the ISPs changed their tactics. They stated colluding with the major tech and streaming services pitching net neutrality as a good thing for the established businesses that could pay the ransom or engage in partnerships. A good example was T-Mobile exempting Netflix from their 2gig data limit on cellular plans. T-Mobile was able to advertise the partnership as a good thing instead of an assault on users and the open internet.
Then the Trump administration took over and took a huge steaming dump on the FCC along with everything else, and the Biden administration just spent the better part of 4 years just trying to seat a commissioner to reinstate open internet.
I’m not optimistic we’ll have it for long.
my_hat_stinks@programming.dev 6 months ago
The concept of net neutrality definitely existed long before Obama so it’s a bit questionable to say it was created under him. Did anything specific happen under him to enforce net neutrality more than it already was?
You’re definitely right about Trump though. It seems like he took every opportunity to screw over the US public in favour of corporate interests.
disguy_ovahea@lemmy.world 6 months ago
It was enacted by the FCC under Obama’s direction in 2015.
obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/node/323681
my_hat_stinks@programming.dev 6 months ago
That link is a 404 so I can’t tell what it says, but here’s a 1996 US act to enforce net neutrality: …wikipedia.org/…/Telecommunications_Act_of_1996
And here’s a 2006 Tim Berners-Lee blog post about threats to net neutrality which specifically says net neutrality already exists, you really can’t get much more authoritive than that: web.archive.org/web/20060703142912/http://…/144
Obama may have enacted some legislation around between neutrality (again, your link 404s so I can’t tell what specifically you’re referring to) but it certainly wasn’t created under Obama.
disguy_ovahea@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Sorry. I corrected it. Here it is again.
obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/net-neutrality
Yes, the internet was neutral by design, but not by legislation. The FCC made it law under Obama’s direction in 2017.
Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world 6 months ago
The problem comes in the fact that net nuetrality is a concept. Not a law. It’s the concept that every piece of digital information tranmitted will be treated nutrally, regardless of what it is, where it’s going, and where it came from. This is the concept of net nuetrality.
Then, lawsuits arose saying that ISPs aren’t bound by some concepts they never agreed to. They lost those lawsuits.
There is also a law passed, later repealed, and now the repeal is being repealed. Soooo…back to legal. This law, was called “the net nutrality law”. Thus making the concept of net nuetrality the basis for a new law.
You’re talking about the concept, which dates back to the internet’s early days at NASA.
He’s talking about the 2015 law.
So, both of you are right, but you’re also both talking to nobody.