for anyone unfamiliar with the classification part, it determines how much power the fcc has in regulation. they went into appeals because comcast claims the fc

for anyone unfamiliar with the classification part, it determines how much power the fcc has in regulation. they went into appeals because comcast claims the fcc is overstepping their authority (comcast won, and they're going to go back to throttling like they were before). according to the Telecommunications Act of 1996, a "telecommunications service" is: offering of telecommunications for a fee directly to the public, or to such classes of users as to be effectively available directly to the public, regardless of the facilities used. and an "information service" is: the offering of a capability for generating, acquiring, storing, transforming, processing, retrieving, utilizing, or making available information via telecommunications, and includes electronic publishing, but does not include any use of any such capability for the management, control, or operation of a telecommunications system or the management of a telecommunications service. a telecommunication service sells the ability to use the coaxial cables. an information service is responsible for everything beyond that. the loophole is when an ISP is considered both, in which case they can't be regulated the way they were meant to be. so comcast, for example, is really a telecomm service, but enjoys the advantages of an information service (a small ISP called Brand X started this whole thing by saying ISPs should be considered both, and that's when the network neutrality debate heated up in 2003). when ISPs are classified as both "information services" and "telecommunications services," they cannot be regulated the same way and the fcc can't do much when they do stuff like deep packet inspection/injection, port blocking, price discrimination, double dipping, etc. my personal opinion on the topic has always been this: comcast and other telecomms own the cables in the ground. they are simply moving bits from point A to point B, but they can never manipulate any of those bits. they should never charge you more money to access your bits from youtube, for example. and they should never slow those bits down, for example, if you're using a non-comcast application (whether it's youtube, itunes, google search, bittorrent, or whatever).