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If you're hearing this for the first time then you aren't getting your news from someone who is aware of the US Telecom Association v FCC case in which the court of appeals made it clear that because of first amendment problems, the FCC can't prohibit censorship by ISPs.

https://techliberation.com/2017/07/12/heres-why-the-obama-fc...

https://www.cadc.uscourts.gov/internet/opinions.nsf/06F8BFD0...

...and this: https://www.attpublicpolicy.com/consumer-broadband/the-surpr...



The court of appeals did no such thing. In your second link, the most recent decision, it wrote:

> Does the rule lie within the agency’s statutory authority? And is it consistent with the First Amendment? The answer to both questions, in our view, is yes.

This was the majority opinion, although one judge dissented and said it did violate the First Amendment.

The court did mention a clause in the FCC order then under consideration about ‘edited’ services, which is what your first link takes out of context. The order itself explicitly allowed for such services, so as far as I can tell, the court did not opine one way or the other on whether ISPs separately have a First Amendment right to provide them. This isn’t as big a loophole as it sounds, though. Describing the order’s requirements, the court wrote:

> That would be true of an ISP that offers subscribers a curated experience by blocking websites lying beyond a specified field of content (e.g., family friendly websites). It would also be true of an ISP that engages in other forms of editorial intervention, such as throttling of certain applications chosen by the ISP, or filtering of content into fast (and slow) lanes based on the ISP’s commercial interests. An ISP would need to make adequately clear its intention to provide “edited services” of that kind, id. ¶ 556, so as to avoid giving consumers a mistaken impression that they would enjoy indiscriminate “access to all content available on the Internet, without the editorial intervention of their broadband provider,” id. ¶ 549. It would not be enough under the Order, for instance, for “consumer permission” to be “buried in a service plan—the threats of consumer deception and confusion are simply too great.” Id. ¶ 19; see id. ¶ 129.

> There is no need in this case to scrutinize the exact manner in which a broadband provider could render the FCC’s Order inapplicable by advertising to consumers that it offers an edited service rather than an unfiltered pathway. No party disputes that an ISP could do so if it wished, and no ISP has suggested an interest in doing so in this court. That may be for an understandable reason: a broadband provider representing that it will filter its customers’ access to web content based on its own priorities might have serious concerns about its ability to attract subscribers.




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