[GauntletWizard]

I've been trying to tell people this for a while - I do believe in net neutrality, but the title II classification is a boondoggle, and those laws need serious rewrite. I'm not seriously concerned about getting arrested for downloading pornography - When was the last time you heard of someone getting arrested for shouting "Fuck!" over the phone? - But I am concerned that those laws were written for Bell Telephone, and survived the breakup and re-integration of the Baby Bells. I don't think they're at all a good fit for how the internet works.

[Pigo]

It seems to me the Internet has been tamed, by in large. But it has to do more with the overlord companies swallowing most of it, and then subjecting everyone to their own regulations. Even if you're on the outside, you can't exist without services that require you to play by their rules (or virtues).

[didibus]

Perfect is the enemy of good. At this point, we can't even get them reclassified as title 2. I doubt there's the will power and civility to come up with a whole new set of laws that are reasonable and designed around the public's best interest.

But, I would be happy if my cynicism gets proven wrong.

[nnfy]

These laws are dangerous because they are vague enough to give the government a free pass to legally target almost anyone who uses the internet.

It is another means to possibly silence whistleblowers and/or opposition.

[moron4hire]

Except these laws already apply to every other form of media and they aren't being used to silence whistleblowers or political opposition.

The sky is not falling.

[nnfy]

"Every other form of media" is not the same as the media on the internet, where individuals create the media.

More importantly, why would you want the federal government to have such abusable power? The sky may not be falling now, but that is no excuse to do nothing while our freedoms are eroded.

[moron4hire]

It's not absolute power, as evidenced by the fact that it hasn't been absolute power.

[anigbrowl]

Your whole argument rests on the unspoken and incorrect premise that such laws aren't open to challenge, when in fact they have been challenged and litigated extensively and you're only looking at the statutory side.

This seems to be a common error among hackers who assume that statute = law and don't consider the history of how courts have interpreted and circumscribed statutes over the years. Of course, this is also a structural problem in our legal system which makes it quite difficult to ascertain what the actual operational parameters are without spending a lot of time in a law library or its digital equivalent. Much of what lawyers are paid for is their knowledge of how to trace and apply that history to new fact patterns.

Girls Lean Back Everywhere by Edward de Grazia is widely considered the best single work on the law of obscenity, although it's heavily focused on sexuality and pornography and may seem somewhat dated by today's standards.

[nnfy]

Regardless of these specific laws, the fact that one has the "freedom" to spend time and money fighting overreaching laws in court does not make them acceptable.

[anigbrowl]

My point is that you don't have to do so to the extent that you're claiming because other people already have.