The U.S. government's push to have all Internet connections treated equally may not apply to users suspected of illegal file sharing.
According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, copyright enforcement will be considered "reasonable network management" under proposed network neutrality rules, which are intended to treat all Internet connections equally regardless of use. That means Internet service providers would theoretically be able to throttle connections in the name of stopping copyright infringement.
The EFF has set up a Web site where people can protest this loophole, and posted a summary of its letter to the FCC. "Copyright enforcement has nothing to do with the technical business of network management," the EFF wrote. "Moreover, the proposed regulations, by their terms, already exclude 'unlawful content,' making any exception for copyright enforcement unnecessary."
If Internet service providers want to use copyright enforcement technologies, the EFF said those technologies should first be submitted to the FCC for public review in order to check for "collateral damage on lawful content."
The fear is that ISPs will use the loophole to dodge network neutrality rules. That way, they could still crack down on high-bandwidth uses such as BitTorrent, even if there's no hard evidence that the user is breaking the law. All they'd have to do is claim that a user is suspected of illegal file sharing and therefore subject to "reasonable network management." For that reason, the EFF also wants service providers to be transparent about when they throttle, so the public can decide if the action is reasonable.
What's troubling about the net neutrality rules as they stand is that it's not clear who decides when someone is breaking the law. If a court order demands that someone's Internet access be restricted, whether for copyright infringement or something more egregious such as child pornography, an exemption to net neutrality rules makes sense. But giving ISPs the power to make those decisions is a slippery slope.
