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Verizon Challenges FCC's Net Neutrality Rules 179

GovTechGuy writes "Verizon filed an appeal on Friday asking a federal court to strike down the FCC's net neutrality rules, which are scheduled to take effect on November 20. A federal judge tossed the FCC's previous attempt at enforcing net neutrality against Comcast last May, and more legal challenges are expected in the coming days."
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Verizon Challenges FCC's Net Neutrality Rules

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  • I think that all of the net neutrality challengers should get together and head over to http://www.privateislandsonline.com/oceania.htm [privateislandsonline.com], where they could buy a volcanic island. Perfect for the super villain that has everything except an evil lair!

    Once set up, /. readers could petition the local government to allow multi-tiered internet provision and drop all evil enterprises to the bottom of the list, throttling them back to dial up speeds! Mwha, mwha, mwha!!!
    • by Twinbee ( 767046 )

      Sites like that seem slightly surreal, almost on the level of "buy your own planet" from the HHGTG or something.

  • Verizon asserts that it is committed to an open internet. Verizon believes the Federal Communications Commission has no business regulating communications. Verizon reports that the turd floating in the punchbowl is a Baby Ruth bar.
    • by Runaway1956 ( 1322357 ) on Monday October 03, 2011 @07:30AM (#37588574) Homepage Journal

      They ALL assert that they are committed to net neutrality. The problem is, they want to define what neutrality is. When you've cut away all the verbiage, to get to the heart of the matter, the telcos only want their monopoly to remain unchallenged, so that they can continue to rape the consumers. To them, "neutrality" means "anything goes, as long as WE approve of it, and it increases profits".

      • Umm... you just described any average company. They all want to maximize profits.
        Companies have a commitment to their shareholders/investors to maximize profit... if they don't do that, the investors would be stupid to invest.

        We've defeated the old communists so that this system can dominate the world. Don't complain now.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          Nope. Capitalism was never meant to give industry ownership of everything. Fact is, a lot of that infrastructure, over which the telcos have been given a monopoly, has been paid for by the taxpayers. We paid for a lot of it with taxes, and we're forced to pay again through all the various fees.

          Don't get me wrong - yes, I agree that the corporations have an obligation to maximize profits for their shareholders. That's fine. But - politicians, judges, and regulators like the FCC have an even greater obli

          • Don't get me wrong - yes, I agree that the corporations have an obligation to maximize profits for their shareholders. That's fine. But - politicians, judges, and regulators like the FCC have an even greater obligation to represent taxpayers, voters, consumers, and/or citizens. And, those politicians have basically sold out to the corporations under discussion.

            So, don't complain about the companies. Instead, complain about the politicians, judges and regulators who sold out to them.

            Companies just do their part of the deal: to get as much money as possible for as little effort as possible... and get away with it without losing customers.
            Customers should switch to another company if the current internet provider seems a bad deal.
            Governments should make sure you have a choice - that there is competition rather than a cartel where all companies basically offer the sa

            • by s73v3r ( 963317 )

              So, don't complain about the companies.

              So, don't complain about the entity that is actually doing this shit?

              Fuck that, they are completely responsible for their actions. If they aren't, then they shouldn't have any rights whatsoever, and should be regulated up the ass.

              Companies just do their part of the deal: to get as much money as possible for as little effort as possible... and get away with it without losing customers.

              This is NOT a good thing. Not for consumers, and definitely not for employees. And this is NOT an excuse for the behavior they've been exhibiting.

              Customers should switch to another company if the current internet provider seems a bad deal.

              Hey, that sounds awesome! I'll just look up at what ISPs are in my part of Orange County, CA. Looks like there's Cox, whom I have alread

              • by Ltap ( 1572175 )
                Indeed. Sort of like the situation of employee drug testing, the "well, work for/buy from someone else" excuse simply does not work if they all do it. If it is something so pervasive that it takes over every possible company you could switch to, you are left with very few options. It's simply a "go away, I don't want to deal with it" answer -- one which misses the point that regardless of everything, it simply should not be done.
          • And the corporations, see, they're all... corporationy.

            Edited for verbosity.

          • by s73v3r ( 963317 )

            Capitalism was never meant to give industry ownership of everything.

            Yeah, it kinda was. It was designed so that consolidation would happen.

            Yeah, we owe the corporations a profit

            The fuck we do. We don't owe them shit. They owe us for their continued existence.

            And if you think that even for a second, then you must agree that they owe us jobs, and therefore should not be able to fire anyone at will.

          • by Shotgun ( 30919 )

            Nope. Capitalism was never meant to give industry ownership of everything.

            The problem is drawing the line between what is private property and what should be controlled by the government. Most of the politicoes try to avoid answering that question, because it sheds a clear light on the issue and exposes the hypocrisy of their political pandering.

            If the infrastructure requires the power of eminent domain to implement, it should forever and always remain the property of the government.

            Remember that Supreme Court decision that allowed cities to use eminent domain to take poor peopl

        • Umm... you just described any average company. They all want to maximize profits.

          That doesn't necessarily make it right.

        • Umm... you just described any average company. They all want to maximize profits.

          Not entirely true. Many companies want to increase marketshare and revenue while growing the company, and keep profits at (or near) zero. Profits can be losses where the magic tax drain kicks in. Think of it like your personal income tax. Declaring equal losses and gains works to your advantage if those losses are actually non-monetary gains.

          But anyways, in theory, a company doesn't just have to worry about shareholders, they have to worry about stakeholders. The idea is, when BP vents a trillion g

        • by Rich0 ( 548339 )

          Perhaps there is a reasonable compromise somewhere between letting telco monopolies completely control all the content on the Internet, and standing in line for my weekly soap and milk ration?

    • by Whalou ( 721698 )
      From TFA:

      We believe this assertion of authority is inconsistent with the statute and will create uncertainty for the communications industry, innovators, investors and consumers.

      Once again the consumers come in last.

  • Let them filter and throttle their private network, but if so connection to the public one is prohibited.

    • What "public one"? The vast majority of the internet is private networks and backbones - not government owned, not public owned, private networks.

      • You have a horrible misunderstanding of the public internet.

        They participate with the public internet, and in exchange for that participation, they get to charge people to access it. Charging people for access is all they should be allowed to do. Instead, they want to throttle, re-route, re-direct, inspect, block and all manner of things which is contradiction to their participation in the public internet.

        But let's look at it this way.

        There is no public telephone system either. There is a public telephon

        • No, I don't have a "horrible misunderstanding" at all - its (pretty much) all private infrastructure, which various people pay to access and carry their traffic over through voluntary agreements.

          There is no "public internet", there is merely the "internet" which is nothing more than a lot of people connecting their networks together - and you are suggesting that one network should not be able to connect to another network purely because of the management of the network...

          I don't "fail to see" anything, I ju

          • The public internet goes over public infrastructure which is granted right-of-way by the representatives of "we the people." There is no private infrastructure -- only the infrastructure they are LEASED.

            Please provide an example of infrastructure they own where it does not require using government guaranteed and protected resources including wires, cables, fibers or radio frequencies?

        • You have a horrible misunderstanding of the public internet.

          They participate with the public internet, and in exchange for that participation, they get to charge people to access it. Charging people for access is all they should be allowed to do. Instead, they want to throttle, re-route, re-direct, inspect, block and all manner of things which is contradiction to their participation in the public internet.

          But let's look at it this way.

          There is no public telephone system either. There is a public telephone network. How pissed would you be to find that when you want to call your bank or your grocery store that your call quality was intentionally decreased or that your calls were blocked or redirected to the competitors of the parties you wanted to call? It's all the same damned thing. How you fail to see it amazes me.

          Dude, you have a horrible misunderstanding of reality. On a tiered internet, and none of the dire things you outline can ever happen. In fact, it becomes in the best interest of the service providers on a tiered internet to not let any of that happen. How you fail to see this is because you believe governments and corporations exist to benefit you, the citizen or consumer. I can assure you that you are living in cloud cuckoo land, if you are that ignorant of economic and political reality.

          • Two questions for you then:

            1. Do you believe the restrictions and limitations placed on the Telcos are appropriate? I speak of the ones where they can't route people through poor quality channels when they don't like one or both parties, where they can't block connections to parties they don't like and so on.

            2. Assuming you support these limitations on Telcos, why do you support the opposite for "data telcos"? And assuming you don't support limitations on Telcos, why do you think they should be allowed to

      • Ok so you claim the cable company is a private entity with their own private network. Why the hell aren't they paying me for having their equipment on my property and why then as a private property owner am I legally prevented from going out and renting a ditch witch and digging up all of their equipment on my property and selling it as scrap since obviously they have abandoned it. They seem to get an awful lot of government granted benefits, but unlike the power or gas company they are not a regulated mono
        • Why the hell aren't they paying me for having their equipment on my property and why then as a private property owner am I legally prevented from going out and renting a ditch witch and digging up all of their equipment on my property and selling it as scrap since obviously they have abandoned it.

          Because your local government decided that these companies could do these things.

          They seem to get an awful lot of government granted benefits, but unlike the power or gas company they are not a regulated monopoly.

          They are regulated locally, by either utility commissions and/or town/city/state representatives. Probably its both.

          Dont ask the federal government to fix your locally fucked up shit with federal laws that apply to people outside of the influence of your locally fucked up shit. The problem is your locally fucked up shit and the solution is fixing it locally.

          Get involved in your local government and stop looking to the fed

          • by Rich0 ( 548339 )

            Get involved in your local government and stop looking to the federal government to micro-manage your local situation.

            Uh, does it really make sense to govern the internet at the local municipality level?

            Should I be able to petition the local government so that google.com resolves to Fred's Search Engine in Stillwater, PA - population 202? And, then what if the big national telco that runs the lines just tells the mayor of Stillwater that they'll simply cut off their connection? To a company like verizon ANY municipality is expendable if it furthers their interests. We can applaud that when it means keeping DNS consisten

        • I don't know about your area, dude, but the the cable and telphone infrastructure (along with the roads, sewer, and airport facilities) in my location were bought and paid for by the tax payers via construction bonds and tax write-offs for the cable and telcos. They lease the lines from we the people. Those lines belong to the community; selling them off as scrap would be just as criminal as scrapping a fire station or police station and selling the bits to a junkyard.

          Your naivete would be stunning if it

  • by Jawnn ( 445279 ) on Monday October 03, 2011 @08:40AM (#37588970)
    The courts (pretty much all of them) don't understand the issue and will get it wrong, handing the carriers a huge gift and the public an ass-reaming like they have never had.
  • by GameboyRMH ( 1153867 ) <gameboyrmh@@@gmail...com> on Monday October 03, 2011 @09:39AM (#37589540) Journal

    The fact that Verizon's unhappy with the very weak net neutrality legislation that has loopholes big enough to drive an aircraft carrier through sideways tells me Verizon has some SERIOUSLY evil plans in store...

  • by radaghast ( 1672864 ) on Monday October 03, 2011 @09:59AM (#37589776)

    Imagine if your power provider wanted to charge different prices for your power based on whether you used it for toasting bread or watching TV; even further, what if it charged more for your toaster power if you used a brand of toaster that has not paid the power company for 'better' rates. The courts would never allow such a business practice.

    • by Nom du Keyboard ( 633989 ) on Monday October 03, 2011 @11:42AM (#37590768)

      Imagine if your power provider wanted to charge different prices for your power based on whether you used it for toasting bread or watching TV; even further, what if it charged more for your toaster power if you used a brand of toaster that has not paid the power company for 'better' rates. The courts would never allow such a business practice.

      That doesn't mean that the FCC has the authority to "fix" this.

  • I think that it's absolutely stupid that Verizon had to wait until the rules went into effect before they could sue over them. Just think for a moment how much cost and trouble these rules will cause if they're overturned months, or years, after they went into effect when all of this could have been avoided by testing them in court first.
    • I think that it's absolutely stupid that Verizon had to wait until the rules went into effect before they could sue over them.

      Verizon has already sued over them, and the rules go into effect on November 20, so its obvious that Verizon did not have to wait until the rules went into effect before they could sue.

      What they had to do was wait until the rules were published in the Federal Register which is the thing that makes them an official rule.

      Just think for a moment how much cost and trouble these rules wi

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