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Communications Government Network The Internet United States

Oregon Becomes Second State To Pass a Net Neutrality Law (katu.com) 91

Posted by BeauHD from the state-rights dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from KATU: Oregon Gov. Kate Brown signed a bill Monday withholding state business from internet providers who throttle traffic, making the state the second to finalize a proposal aimed at thwarting moves by federal regulators to relax net neutrality requirements. The bill stops short of actually putting new requirements on internet service providers in the state, but blocks the state from doing business with providers that offer preferential treatment to some internet content or apps, starting in 2019. The move follows a December vote by the Federal Communications Commission repealing Obama-era rules that prohibited such preferential treatment, referred to generally as throttling, by providers like AT&T, Comcast, and Verizon. Brown's signature makes the state the second to enact such legislation, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. It also stakes out the state's claim to a moderate approach, compared to others: Five weeks to the day before Brown, Washington State Gov. Jay Inslee signed a bill in his state to directly regulate providers there. The prohibition, which restricts with whom the state may contract for internet services, applies to cities and counties, but exempts areas with only a single provider.
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Oregon Becomes Second State To Pass a Net Neutrality Law More

Oregon Becomes Second State To Pass a Net Neutrality Law

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  • Fair Weather Federalists (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 10, 2018 @08:12AM (#56411641)

    How long before supposed Federalists are commenting about the overreach of state regulations?

    • Re:Fair Weather Federalists (Score:4, Interesting)

      by XxtraLarGe ( 551297 ) on Tuesday April 10, 2018 @08:27AM (#56411707) Journal

      How long before supposed Federalists are commenting about the overreach of state regulations?

      You're confused. This is actually a perfect example of how federalism should operate. Ironically, it took the election of Donald Trump for the left to embrace federalism.

      • Agreed. I live in Oregon, so this concerns me, and not residents of other states.

        If Comcast, CenturyStink, Frontier, Charter, and suchlike throw a fit, that affects us, though it's unclear how they will react.

        Now coho.net (a small wireless ISP) specifically blocks/bans BitTorrent packets (they say as much on their customer page [coho.net], so it'll be interesting to see how they respond...)

        • Even funnier... I wonder if the State of Oregon realizes that VoIP QoS might be considered throttling...

        • Agreed. I live in Oregon, so this concerns me, and not residents of other states.

          It might be interesting when the State of Oregon goes back to 1990 and loses all Internet connectivity because it cannot find an internet provider that doesn't do some traffic limiting. Even if it is nothing more than the border congestion issues that look like throttling. Of course, we don't have a fancy ACA health portal to worry about needing internet for -- the previous Governor and Oracle managed to screw that up pretty good.

          Does this apply to local governments, too? I mean, will the schools have to t

      • There is still the general problem that States can't make money like the feds. However State rights have been hindered by both political parties. Politically I am more of a Whig [modernwhig.org] myself. Where the idea that each state has different needs, cultures, and sensitivities. Each state should have more control of what it does and what laws are passed.
        The problem isn't too much regulation or too little. But regulations that are passed across a country that goes from ocean to ocean and has multiple climates from tund

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Ichijo ( 607641 )

        Now let's work on embracing fiscal federalism by asking Washington to send each state an itemized bill. This would effectively abolish the IRS as each state figures out how to tax its own residents to pay the bill. A weak central government is still a conservative virtue, right?

        Of course this will likely bankrupt the red states [redstatesocialism.org] other than Texas but it will save the blue states a ton of money. For liberals, that will mean two benefits for the price of one, and who doesn't like 2-for-1 deals?

        Let's do this!

        • No, Federalism does NOT mean "Washington does whatever it wants and bills the States".

          Federalism is "Washington does ONLY what the Constitution says it can, and everything else is up to the States".

          Note that most of the current Federal Budget consists of things that the Constitution does NOT mention as Federal Powers (Social Security and Medicare alone being most of the Federal budget...).

          What we'd have left at the Federal level would be the military, INS/Customs, and arguably the Interstate Highway Syst

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Ichijo ( 607641 )

            Federalism is "Washington does ONLY what the Constitution says it can, and everything else is up to the States".

            Not exactly. Federalism is where the central government and the regional governments have equal power.

            Note that most of the current Federal Budget consists of things that the Constitution does NOT mention as Federal Powers (Social Security and Medicare alone being most of the Federal budget...).

            The welfare clause of the U.S. Constitution (Article I, Section 8) disagrees with you that Social Secu

        • Now let's work on embracing fiscal federalism by asking Washington to send each state an itemized bill. This would effectively abolish the IRS as each state figures out how to tax its own residents to pay the bill. A weak central government is still a conservative virtue, right?

          Works for me. We can use apportionment for determining every state's share. While we're at it, can we turn welfare back to the states as well?

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Ichijo ( 607641 )

            You'd have to strike the welfare clause from the U.S. Constitution (Article I, Section 8), or the 10th Amendment, to turn welfare back to the states.

            • You'd have to strike the welfare clause from the U.S. Constitution (Article I, Section 8), or the 10th Amendment, to turn welfare back to the states.

              General welfare doesn't mean "payments to poor people." That stuff didn't start until "The Great Society" under Johnson. Before that, it was handled either by the counties, states, churches or other charities.

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by Ichijo ( 607641 )

                General welfare doesn't mean "payments to poor people."

                What definition of "general welfare" are you using that excludes payments to poor people?

      • And wen Barack Obama was president, the conservatives embraced federalism. In other words, people will take the fight to wherever they can win!

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by HiThere ( 15173 )

        That is *an* example of how federalism should work. The GP however, was claiming that those who previously espoused federalism would denounce it. It wouldn't surprise me if he was correct, as poliitcal stances usually seem more tied into emotional reactions to social and economic issues than to the logic that they purportedly are based on.

        The thing is, calling the NeoCons federalists is abuse of the language. They are as much centralists as are most of the progressive left. Centralist vs. Decentralist i

  • Win for the good guys (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    We need more states to take this type of action.

  • They didn't actually impose any rules on a carrier. Just said they wouldn't give "state business" to a carrier. Big deal.

    • TFA doesn't mention the obvious question: is Oregon sure that a carrier that doesn't preferentially throttle traffic even exists?

      • Doesn't matter - if they want business from the State of Oregon, they'll have to exist.

        Someone will want those contracts, even if it's not a massive conglomerate like Comcast or Charter / Spectrum.

        • Someone will want those contracts,

          The question will be, will anyone be able to afford fulfilling them? They'll have to provide full bandwidth peering with someone just to avoid any border gateway congestion issues at any time, for example. That will have to ripple down to the end user.

          And what's even funnier, it may mean that the state has "better" internet service, but it won't mean squat for the residents. The big companies will just create subsidiaries to deal with the state.

          But the lower level question is, how can they do that? I mean

          • The actual cables and wires are government granted monopoly, because it makes sense to not have 7 different coax demarcs on the side of each house depending on what company you are working with. However, in the case of not-cable ISPs, they are all "common carrier" status, so they get to pick who gets their MPLS data as long as they can get a physical circuit in place at the site.

            This whole thing is stupid because it's not like they are using residential services here that are virtually guaranteed to be eff

            • The actual cables and wires are government granted monopoly,

              No, they are not. They are part of the franchisee's equipment, and there are no exclusive franchises anymore.

              because it makes sense to not have 7 different coax demarcs on the side of each house depending on what company you are working with.

              Coax is so 1900's. In any case, you don't need to have 7. The customer only needs as many as the number of companies he buys from. I have two already -- one for cable, one for telephone. Sorry, but the original franchise rules (which did permit exclusivity) weren't there to keep the customer from needing multiple demarcs.

              at the very least they are using a "business class" service for each location so that there is a service level agreement in place

              Many city-level connections are provided through the franchise agreement, such a

  • if you don't want all these laws over ridden by federal law. You need to vote the bums out (on both sides, I'm lookin' at you, Nancy Pelosi).

  • Going to California, Cali, Cali, going to California, got Net Neutrality!

    Ecotopia is here, btw, Apple just went 100 percent renewables worldwide, and we're not letting the grampas hold us back.

  • There are so many weasel words baked into this that no ISP on the planet could be confident they wouldn't fall afoul of it, and so many exceptions that state agencies can pretty much do whatever they want anyway.

    Here's the relevant language from the enrolled version of the bill [state.or.us]:

    (3) A public body may not contract with a broadband Internet access service provider that, at any time on or after the operative date specified in section 3 of this 2018 Act:
    (a) Engages in paid prio

    • Yes, laws are complex. Who knew?

      • Yes, network neutrality is complex and so the laws that govern it have to be complex, too. Who knew?

        (b) Blocks lawful content, applications or services or nonharmful devices;

        One of my local ISPs blocks email that is not spam. It is in violation of this law. Another one blocks specific well-known-ports (which pass lawful content). One of them is a major company. One of them is not. Who does my local government get its internet from? Who do the schools start paying for internet when they can't get it for free from Comcast?

        • One of my local ISPs blocks email that is not spam.

          Interesting business model, but okay.

          It is in violation of this law.

          Welcome to the US of A, where we have judges, and juries presiding over trials. That is where your silly hypotheticals get thrown out.

          Who do the schools start paying for internet when they can't get it for free from Comcast?

          Won't someone think of the children?

      • That might have been a valid rejoinder had complexity been one of my critiques. I'd suggest you try to educate yourself a bit about the issues I actually did raise, but I can appreciate how retasking those neurons might unduly detract from your ability to produce the stream of drive-by one-liners littering your comment history.

        • your ability to produce the stream of drive-by one-liners littering your comment history.

          You do realize, your post consists of exactly one line of original text, right? Otherwise you just lazily pasted an excerpt of the law and hoped people would be outraged because it's more than one line and contains legalese.

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