NNSquad - Network Neutrality Squad
[ NNSquad ] Text of Markey's H.R. 3458: Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2009
Interested parties can inspect the entire text of Markey's Internet
Freedom Preservation Act of 2009 (H.R. 3458) at:
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c111:h3458:
A paragraph that seems to be triggering the most noise is:
(5) [ISP will] not provide or sell to any content, application, or
service provider, including any affiliate provider or joint
venture, any offering that prioritizes traffic over that of other
such providers on an Internet access service; ...
I interpret this as simply creating an even playing field in terms of
the ISPs' subscribers being able to access the Internet services of
their choosing on a nondiscriminatory basis. That is, the ISP should
not show favoritism in delivering traffic to/from Internet or other
content service (A) simply because Internet or other content service
(A) paid the ISP directly to skew the service levels to the
comparative detriment of Internet or other content service (B).
I do not view this language as prohibiting the handling of different
kinds of traffic with different priorities, so long as the handling is
nondiscriminatory and equivalently provisioned *for any given type of
traffic* between the ISP and Internet or other content services,
without bias triggered by payments or other "special considerations"
between Internet or other content services and the ISP.
--Lauren--
NNSquad Moderator