The Electronic Frontier Foundation is not happy with the Federal Communications Commission’s proposed Net Neutrality rules because they come with built-in loopholes, the most egregious being a clause which allows providers to throttle, block or otherwise interfere with traffic that could consist of “the unlawful distribution of copyrighted works.”

The movie and recording industries have been attacking Net Neutrality for months, accusing it of providing a copyright-violating-free-for-all.  The FCC seems all-too-willing to adopt that meme, and write a convenient lobbyist-friendly loophole into Net Neutrality policies that would suggest provider interference with broadband networks is bad… except when this or that special interest redefines it as “good and lawful network management.”

For years, the entertainment industry has used that innocent-sounding phrase — “unlawful distribution of copyrighted works” — to pressure Internet service providers around the world to act as copyright cops — to surveil the Internet for supposed copyright violations, and then censor or punish the accused users.

From the beginning, a central goal of the Net Neutrality movement has been to prevent corporations from interfering with the Internet in this way — so why does the FCC’s version of Net Neutrality specifically allow them to do so?

The EFF is asking consumers to sign an online petition asking the FCC to yank that exception out of their proposed Net Neutrality rules, and let the industry use existing law enforcement methods to protect copyrighted works.  Of all the industries that seem to do just fine zealously efforting to protect its copyright interests, Hollywood and the music industry don’t need additional special protection clauses inserted into broadband policy law.

Law enforcement can use existing laws to chase crime, and most honest Internet Service Providers would tell you they don’t want to police their users.  Allowing this exception is a convenient backdoor to do what some have wanted all along — to throttle or block high volume network traffic like torrents and newsgroups, this time under the guise of taking a bite out of crime.

While directly appealing to the FCC might be more effective, signing the petition at least gives the EFF the ability to draw media and political attention to a worthy endeavor.

Let’s not repeat the same mistakes certain other major policy initiatives have endured this past year, where good intentions were steamrolled by lobbyists into a loophole-ridden, industry-protectionist horror show.

The best way to ensure an open and free Internet is to literally demand exactly that — no exceptions.