The internet superhighway is flowing freely again.

On Thursday, the Federal Communications Commission voted 3-2 to classify the internet as a public utility, in effect restoring “net neutrality” rules first established in 2015 and then repealed in 2017 under the Trump administration. Still, at least one significant loophole may remain.

Neutral Observer

So what the heck was net neutrality all about anyway? When the rules are in place, internet service providers (ISPs) must allow equal access to all websites and domains, allowing for some “reasonable network management.” Without the rule, proponents say, internet service plans look a lot more like cable bundles: For $80 a month, you could earn high-speed access to Facebook and Google, but maybe not Netflix or TikTok. Or maybe Comcast could throttle access to competitor Disney+ while opening the traffic lanes for subsidiary Peacock.

AT&T, for example, began doing just that, allowing users to stream content from subsidiary DirecTV without having it count against monthly data caps, a move sometimes referred to as “zero rating.” The company dropped the promotion nationwide in 2021 when California passed its own net neutrality law. “[ISPs] have started to slowly exploit this lack of oversight and limit what people can do online,” Barbara Van Schewick, a law professor and Director of Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society, said in an appearance on NPR’s Planet Money in October, likening users to a frog in a slowly boiling pot of water.

The final language included in Thursday’s restoration ruling has yet to be released, but a draft earlier this month showed most of the rules in the 2015 order will be returning — with one potential major exception:

• While the draft rules barred ISPs from favoring certain sites by blocking or throttling access to other sites, it allows some wiggle room for what is sometimes called “fast lanes” or “network slices” — which essentially grant favorable traffic rights.
• Because internet bandwidth is finite, some critics, like the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit focused on digital civil liberties, see fast lanes as no different than throttling — and consider its allowance a major loophole. 

In an email to The Daily Upside, the EFF said, “We’re glad that the FCC voted to restore net neutrality protections and look forward to reading the final rule.”

Fire Season: The 2017 repeal, known as the Restoring Internet Freedom Order, also included language that stripped away most of the FCC’s authority to oversee the ISP industry. That meant no federal body could step in and mediate a high-profile 2018 dispute between Verizon and the fire department in Santa Clara, California, when the department saw its internet speeds throttled down to dial-up levels amid the then-worst wildfires in state history. “This is where [the Restoring Internet Freedom Order] leaves us: a for-profit company getting to make public safety determinations,” the EFF wrote at the time.

One of the world’s oldest and biggest diamond producers has lost its shine.

The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that British mining company Anglo American is considering selling off its diamond mining subsidiary De Beers, a 136-year-old concern. The potential sale is playing out against a much larger deal as Anglo American’s Australian rival BHP has offered to buy Anglo American for $39 billion. There aren’t many transactions that could make diamonds feel like an afterthought, but here we are…

Hard Times

While De Beers may not be the jewel in Anglo American’s crown, it’s huge as far as diamond producers go. It and Russian mining giant Alrosa supply around two-thirds of the world’s rough diamonds, according to the Financial Times. Diamond miners large and small have suffered severe whiplash over the past few years — demand for the precious stones soared in 2020 as people stuck at home indulged in retail therapy, but demand dried up and by 2023 there was a supply glut which precipitated a price fall so perilous that both De Beers and Alrosa halted sales of their stones for a few months.

Although De Beers brushed off concerns about prices at the time as normal market fluctuation (or as De Beers’ head of diamond trading called it: “a little bit of cannibalization”), worries persist about the ability of rough diamonds to compete in a world where lab-grown diamonds are not only bloodless but cheaper: 

• Per the FT, lab-grown diamond prices have sunk to around 15% or even less that of natural diamonds. Independent diamond industry analyst Paul Ziminsky told the paper that lab-grown diamonds account for around 10% of the global diamond jewelry market.
• According to a Forbes report, lab-grown diamonds could go much lower. Rachel Smith, a head valuer at online jeweler Hatton Jewels, told Forbes that some retailers massively inflate lab-grown gem prices by as much as 1,200% — either because they fear that a diamond that looks too cheap just won’t sell, or because hey, a 1,200% markup ain’t bad.

So who would buy a diamond mining business if diamonds are going out of style? The WSJ reported that DeBeers has already held talks with “luxury houses and Gulf sovereign-wealth funds.”

Copper-bottomed M&A: BHP, Anglo American’s prospective buyer, doesn’t have a diamond-mining operation, and the deal is mostly focused on creating the world’s biggest copper-mining business. Copper is looking brighter due to its usefulness in green transition technologies, and Bloomberg’s Mark Burton predicts a BHP acquisition of Anglo American would spark a flurry of mining M&A. There’s copper in them thar hills…

Look, Ma, no hands… or eyes.

Mercedes just became the first manufacturer to sell autonomous cars in the US that don’t require drivers to watch the road, Fortune reported.

Cruise Control, My Good Man

Plenty of carmakers have set their sights on finally realizing the sci-fi concept of drivers entering a location into a dashboard computer and then sitting back while the car does all the work. Tesla has Full-Self Driving mode, but drivers still need to keep their hands on the wheel and remain vigilant. Robotaxis like Waymo and Cruise are fully autonomous, but those are services for passengers, not drivers.

Along comes Mercedes’s Drive Pilot technology, which rolled out in Europe in 2022, which doesn’t require drivers to stay focused on the road. They can check emails, fix their makeup, or solve the day’s Wordle. But we’re not quite at the level of Knight Rider’s KITT just yet:

• Cars with Drive Pilot are only available for sale in California and Nevada, and even there it only works on certain freeways. Mercedes hasn’t approved the eyes-free autonomous mode for roads in other states, so forget about that cross-country trip without ever having to look out the front window just yet.  
• Plus, it needs to be daytime and the car has to be traveling less than 40 mph for Drive Pilot to work, making it more suitable for heavy traffic jams on “The 405,” as Southern Californians would say.

There’s also the cost. Drive Pilot is less of a feature and more of a service. Mercedes EQS sedan and S-Class owners can get the autopilot capabilities for a yearly payment of $2,500.

Levels to This Game: Drive Pilot is considered to have “level 3” autonomous capabilities, meaning the driver will still have to take over the controls at some point. Mercedes has said it’s working on level 4, which would offer near-total autonomy, and expects to bring it to market by 2030, Fortune reported. But because self-driving tech is still so new and drivers need to learn how to use it properly — Tesla has been at the center of hundreds of crashes — we won’t feel too bad if Mercedes extends its goalposts.