ISPs providing DNS and caching was a key part of the Pai FCC's reclassification of ISPs as an "information service" instead of a "communication service", as part of their repeal of net neutrality.
The FCC has a lot of leeway in deciding whether something is an "information service" or a "communication service", but they do have to be able to justify the decision. Pai went with the ISP's providing DNS and caching.
I wonder, if most people end up using DNS from third parties, and caching from third party CDNs, it will make it easier for a future FCC to reclassify ISPs as communication services, and put back net neutrality?
PS: Pai's approach partially backfired. He also tried to use the FCCs power to preempt state regulation to prohibit states from imposing net neutrality. But reclassification of ISPs as information services meant that the FCC no longer had the power to regulate net neutrality (indeed, that was the point of Pai reclassifing them), and the FCC's power to preempt state regulation only applies to things that the FCC could regulate.
"ISPs providing DNS and caching was a key part of the Pai FCC's reclassification of ISPs as an "information service"..."
I thought the same thing when I read about that decision. Many try to label DNS as "intrastructure", with the implication that some third party and not the user should have control over it. As an ordinary user, I do not use third party DNS. I will never believe that from a technical standpoint all ordinary users must use third party DNS.
I had an ISP that intercepted my requests, and would return bogus (ads) results if the resolution for that particular address failed. Moving off of port 53 was enough to bypass it, but it was easier to just tunnel my DNS requests. The sad thing now is google thinks I need extra captchas because of my weird DNS geo-location. I can't win.
The FCC has a lot of leeway in deciding whether something is an "information service" or a "communication service", but they do have to be able to justify the decision. Pai went with the ISP's providing DNS and caching.
I wonder, if most people end up using DNS from third parties, and caching from third party CDNs, it will make it easier for a future FCC to reclassify ISPs as communication services, and put back net neutrality?
PS: Pai's approach partially backfired. He also tried to use the FCCs power to preempt state regulation to prohibit states from imposing net neutrality. But reclassification of ISPs as information services meant that the FCC no longer had the power to regulate net neutrality (indeed, that was the point of Pai reclassifing them), and the FCC's power to preempt state regulation only applies to things that the FCC could regulate.