It's not net neutrality, but it is conceptually related. Net neutrality is the principle that an ISP should treat internet traffic equally regardless of content, sender, or receiver [1]. Put another way, ISPs should not have the discretion to restrict internet traffic or internet access. If your personal concept of net neutrality is limited to an ISPs voluntary decisions, then the court case in the article is merely adjacent to net neutrality.

On the other hand, I believe that the principle of net neutrality should extend to US governments: for the most part, governments should not be allowed to restrict internet traffic or internet access.

1. Internet traffic is speech and expression. The First Amendment makes freedom of expression the default.

2. Internet access is increasingly necessary for work, school, politics beyond a local level, and getting internet access. See appendix A for bonus information.

3. Internet users and websites usually are the people who decide what traffic the users see, government interventions over the content (regarding such as CSAM and copyright infringement) should directly sue users and website owners (and not ISPs), because lawsuits to ISPs rather than to ISP users are less visible to those users and therefore less likely to attract the users' opposition.

4. Letting a government block internet access even for a reason like copyright infringement is a slippery slope toward willful blindness to false positives and excessive punishments. See appendix C for bonus info.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_neutrality

Everything below this line is bonus.

Appendix A: Regarding my earlier claim that Internet access is "increasingly necessary": Seeking a sufficiently paying job, never mind working, is hard without internet. Students need internet to get emails, use online learning management systems, collaborate, video call, etc. Fact checking what you read/hear offline or see/hear via internet-less TV about politics beyond a local level is impossible. (Asking a friend to do it for you on the internet is not allowed in this thought experiment.) Getting internet access requires contacting an ISP in the first place, and getting the phone number without visiting the ISPs website is hard without internet.

Appendix B: The net neutrality debate in 2017 was actually a debate about the FCC's entire authority to protect consumers in the internet access market [B1].

> A big part of the FCC’s plan involves rolling back the FCC’s tailor-made authority over broadband providers, then shoveling all remaining government oversight to an FTC ill-equipped to handle it.

> Why is that a problem? The FTC has no rule-making ability, and can only move to protect consumers after a violation has occurred. And that action can only occur if it’s painfully clear that an ISP engaged in “unfair and deceptive” behavior, something that’s easy for an ISP to dodge in the net neutrality era, where anti-competitive behavior is often buried under faux-technical jargon and claims that it was done only for the health and safety of the network.

And let's be clear, internet access remains mostly the same since 2017 (deceptively priced, overpriced, slow, not fiber, data capped, not available in rural places) because states passed net neutrality laws [B2].

[B1] https://www.vice.com/en/article/yw5d5g/net-neutrality-big-te...

[B2] https://www.techdirt.com/2022/01/28/courts-again-shoot-down-...

Appendix C: Orrin Hatch wants to destroy the computers of people who commit copyright infringement [C1]. (I kept the Wikipedia bracket citations in the quote so that you can control-F for each paragraph in the original article.)

> Hatch was long a proponent of expanding intellectual property rights and in 1997 introduced the Senate version of the Copyright Term Extension Act.[89] Hatch believed that intellectual property laws should, in general, more closely mirror real property laws, and offer greater protections to authors and creators.[89]

> Hatch caused an overnight controversy on June 17, 2003, by proposing that copyright owners should be able to destroy the computer equipment and information of those suspected of copyright infringement, including file sharing, he stated that "This may be the only way you can teach somebody about copyrights."[90] In the face of criticism, especially from technology and privacy advocates, Hatch withdrew his suggestion days later, after it was discovered that Sen. Hatch's official website was using an unlicensed JavaScript menu from United Kingdom-based software developer Milonic Solutions. Milonic founder Andy Woolley stated that "We've had no contact with them. They are in breach of our licensing terms." Shortly after the publication of that story in Wired magazine, the company that runs Hatch's website contacted Milonic to start registration.

[C1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orrin_Hatch#Intellectual_prope...