Legal Situation
In the United States, the Federal Communications Commission does not permit data discrimination except for "reasonable traffic management."
The Federal Communication Commission defines reasonable traffic management as follows:
A network management practice is reasonable if it is appropriate and tailored to achieving a legitimate network management purpose, taking into account the particular network architecture and technology of the broadband Internet access service.
It is considered unreasonable for internet service providers to manage traffic by blocking applications or assigning quality of service based on source, destination, or unreasonable application provider payment. Regardless, there are currently no laws prohibiting internet service providers from offering different service plans that may restrict consumers' access to selected material.
Read more about this topic: Data Discrimination
Famous quotes containing the words legal and/or situation:
“Lawyers are necessary in a community. Some of you ... take a different view; but as I am a member of that legal profession, or was at one time, and have only lost standing in it to become a politician, I still retain the pride of the profession. And I still insist that it is the law and the lawyer that make popular government under a written constitution and written statutes possible.”
—William Howard Taft (18571930)
“When the situation is, what we would wish, nothing is so ill- timed as to hint at the circumstances which make it so: you thank Fortune ... you had reasonthe heart knew it, and was satisfied; and who but an English philosopher would have sent notices of it to the brain to reverse the judgment?”
—Laurence Sterne (17131768)