The FCC approved net neutrality rules on Tuesday that aim to prevent Internet providers from discriminating against legal content. Net neutrality advocates, Republicans, and Internet providers are all, miraculously, in agreement with their disappointment.

Net neutrality advocates have long lobbied for laws that would prevent Internet providers from blocking competitive content, charging for faster connections to certain sites, and a slew of other worse-case scenarios. While the Open Internet Order does prevent fixed broadband providers from blocking access to sites and applications, the rules are different for wireless providers and not as clear as advocates would like.

Interest group Public Knowledge’s Harold Feld wrote on the organization’s blog that : “On every single important and controversial question on what an ‘open Internet’ actually means — such as whether companies can create ‘fast lanes’ for ‘prioritized’ content or what exactly wireless providers can and cannot do — the actual language of the rules is silent, ambiguous, or even at odds with the text of the implementing Order.”

In response to a draft of the Order, net neutrality advocate Free Press joined about 80 other grassroots organizations in signing an open letter to the FCC calling for what it termed “real net neutrality.”

The letter complained that the Order “leaves wireless users vulnerable to application blocking and discrimination,” uses “unnecessarily broad definitions,” and that specialized services “would create a pay-for-play platform that would destroy today’s level playing field.”

Wireless providers, unsurprisingly, also had a problem with the rules. Verizon released a statement that argued government intervention — not Internet provider discrimination — was a fast-track to losing the open web. Republicans were no more enthusastic. Sen. Mitch McConnell said that the proposed rule would “harm investment, stifle innovation, and lead to job losses.”

Net neutrality may have passed, but its fate is anything but decided. Politico reported that less than an hour after the FCC approved the rules, the Republican party started planning its repeal, and it’s not clear that the FCC even has the authority to enforce the new laws. When the question came up this April, a U.S. appeals court ruled that the FCC could not stop Comcast from controlling user traffic in instances of peer-to-peer downloading.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, enot-poloskun

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