Follow Slashdot stories on Twitter

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Communications Businesses The Courts United States Your Rights Online

US Appeals Court Will Not Reconsider Net Neutrality Repeal Ruling (reuters.com) 74

Posted by msmash from the end-of-road dept.
A U.S. appeals court said late on Thursday it will not reconsider an October ruling that largely upheld the repeal of landmark net neutrality rules, rejecting requests by 15 U.S. states, and tech and advocacy groups. From a report: The Federal Communications Commission in December 2017 reversed Obama-era rules prohibiting internet service providers (ISPs) from blocking or throttling traffic, or offering paid fast lanes, a blow to large tech companies and consumer groups that had championed the level playing field of net neutrality. In orders issued Thursday, the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia declined without comment to rehear the decision, as did the three-judge panel that issued the ruling in October. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, who had proposed and championed the repeal, was pleased with the decision, a spokeswoman for him said. "The internet has remained free and open, consumers have been protected, speeds have increased, and more and more Americans have gotten access to broadband," she said.
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

US Appeals Court Will Not Reconsider Net Neutrality Repeal Ruling More

US Appeals Court Will Not Reconsider Net Neutrality Repeal Ruling

Comments Filter:

  • Presidential decrees are not the way to do it. Get laws passed.

    • Re:Pass Laws (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Patent Lover ( 779809 ) on Friday February 07, 2020 @03:36PM (#59702434)
      Already passed the House. Guess what happened in the Senate? https://www.vox.com/2019/4/10/... [vox.com]

      • Re:Pass Laws (Score:4, Interesting)

        by PPH ( 736903 ) on Friday February 07, 2020 @04:57PM (#59702702)

        Write your senator. Preferably via snail-mail. And apologize for that due to the fact that their web site and e-mail has been blocked by your local ISP.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Some Guy I Dont Know ( 6200212 )

        The Save the Internet Act of 2019 was a horrible pile of shit that not only didn't give us net neutrality, it actually attempted to expand government control over the internet.

        And that's beyond that fact that it was likely unconstitutional, unenforceable, and inconsistent [phoenix-center.org].

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by guruevi ( 827432 )

          Obama's rule didn't give us Net Neutrality either. The promise of "not allowing fast lanes" was already inherent in the FCC's protections for telecom providers, Obama's rules cancelled those protections and did create fast lanes as long as it wasn't limiting other traffic or charged for. Hence why the day after the ruling went into effect, T-Mobile, AT&T and Verizon offered zero-rated streaming on their own (paid) video service, which limited other traffic if in use.

          Everything to do with Net Neutrality

        • I'm sure that's why Moscow Mitch decided to not even debate the bill.

  • CA OR WA all have Net Neutrality (Score:3)

    by WillAffleckUW ( 858324 ) on Friday February 07, 2020 @02:17PM (#59702114) Homepage Journal

    We in the West are free.

    Enjoy being serfs.

    Psst: you don't have to listen to them.

    • List of states with Net Neutrality: Net Neutrality 2019 Legislation. [ncsl.org]
      Wacky: States have differently-written laws! What a mess!

      Washington State: Washington State keeps enforcing net neutrality as it hails FCC court loss. [arstechnica.com] (Oct. 15, 2019)

      Oregon: Oregon's net neutrality a big win. [registerguard.com] (Oct. 11, 2019)

      California: Upholding FCC's repeal of net neutrality rules, court opens door for California to enforce its own. [latimes.com] (Oct. 3, 2019)

    • We in the West are free.

      Enjoy being serfs.

      That's funny, considering how many people are having to live 4-to-an-apartment out there because they can't afford their own. And any dreams of owning a home? Pffft.

      I live in the south. My house and 3 year old vehicle are paid for, I've got less than $1K in credit card debt, and make enough to support a wife and family. But hey, I'm the serf.

    • You are still a serf (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Solandri ( 704621 ) on Friday February 07, 2020 @03:56PM (#59702498)
      The need for net neutrality is just a symptom. The fundamental problem is cable monopolies. The only reason Verizon, Comcast, etc. can get away with blackmailing Netflix to pay up or have their service degraded is because the customers have no alternative ISP. If you had a choice of two cable ISPs, and the one you were using began throttling your Netflix, what would happen? You would cancel service and switch to the other ISP. That's how the market works. A company does something not in their customers' best interests, and they lose customers. The cable ISPs are only able to blackmail Netflix because they know their customers are captive - they can't switch to a different ISP (at least not one with cable Internet speeds). So even if the cable companies adopt a tactic which is not in their customers' best interests, their customers cannot flee. The customers have no voice.

      So net neutrality is only necessary when there's no competition among ISPs. And the reason there is no competition among cable ISPs is because your local government gave Verizon, Comcast, etc. a monopoly in your area. In other words, this isn't even a natural market problem. It's a government-created problem. People keep trying to paint the cable monopolies as a failure of the market, when it's a poster child for a failure of government regulation. But because it's a govenrment-created problem, it's trivial for government to solve. You don't need some national or state-wide government intervention. All that needs to happen to fix it is for the government to stop giving cable companies monopolies.

      But the government doesn't want to do that. Awarding a cable company a monopoly means that company is beholden to the government. They'll make the appropriate campaign contributions to assure their monopoly is maintained. The politicians want the money to remain flowing, so they came up with net neutrality as a band-aid fix. Outlaw the blackmail so they can tell the public that they've "fixed" the problem come election time. But leave the monopolies intact so that they're still getting the campaign contributions. If you think passing net neutrality makes you free, then your politicians have successfully hoodwinked you.

      As long as the monopolies remain, the other monopoly problems remain. High prices, slower speeds, low monthly data caps, slower maintenance service, fewer plan options. Net neutrality does nothing to fix these problems. Getting rid of the monopolies fixes all of them as well as eliminates the need for net neutrality, because getting rid of the monopolies gives power back to the customers. You and I can vote with our dollars which ISP is giving us the best service for our money, and any ISP which tries shenanigans like blackmailing Netflix ends up going bankrupt when their customers flee their anti-customer practices.

      • Re:You are still a serf (Score:5, Insightful)

        by thomn8r ( 635504 ) on Friday February 07, 2020 @04:46PM (#59702654)

        If you had a choice of two cable ISPs, and the one you were using began throttling your Netflix, what would happen? You would cancel service and switch to the other ISP.

        Except in real life, both ISPs would throttle your Netflix.

        • Except in real life, both ISPs would throttle your Netflix.

          Except real life shows us you're wrong.

          There's no reason you would be limited to two providers. Just like you have a rise in MVNOs these days providing wireless services, the same can be done with the cable and phone infrastructure.

          I'm in Canada and I have access to at least a dozen different cable ISPs. Some throttle, some don't. Some have usage caps, some don't. All of them have different pricing tiers, different add-on services, etc. There's a huge amount of choice, all thanks to a decision by the g

          • And most of Europe has a regulated or government-run monopoly, where you don't have to choose from a dozen plans that all fuck you in one way or another, but just works.

            • And most of Europe has a regulated or government-run monopoly, where you don't have to choose

              It's wonderful that the EU had decided to follow the Soviet example of freeing citizens from the tyranny of choice. Maybe next they can free you from having to chose which car to drive, which clothes to wear, and which books to read.

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by jbengt ( 874751 )

            Except in real life, both ISPs would throttle your Netflix.

            Except real life shows us you're wrong.

            There's no reason you would be limited to two providers.

            The only way to get the choice of at least a dozen different cable ISPs at a single home is if the cable is operated by someone other than the ISP and the cable owner sells access at reasonable prices to all comers. It's just too expensive for dozens of providers to each provide their own cable and then only get a fraction of the customers. So, in a free market without that (probably government-owned) accessible cable, the first mover would have a huge advantage and you would probably only end up with one

          • all thanks to a decision by the government to abandon the old duopoly and open up the market to smaller competitors

            We have a rule for this too, included in the telecommunications act of 1996. In order for it to apply, the ISPs need to be classified as telecommunications services.

            If you were familiar with the situation here, you'd find that funny.

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion

        • Most people's telephone company's internet offerings are bad jokes, even though we the people gave the telcos literally billions of dollars to improve internet access. Don't pretend they're a viable alternative for most users.

  • By now most courts have been stuffed by Trump (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 07, 2020 @02:19PM (#59702130)
    and the Republican Senate. They've done so much damage it could take a generation to get back to something reasonable. And this is the kind of thing we're going to be seeing much, much more of as a result.
    • Why 5, Funny? Should be 5, Insightful.

      • Re:By now most courts have been stuffed by Trump (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Solandri ( 704621 ) on Friday February 07, 2020 @05:35PM (#59702840)
        Funny because it's the pot calling the kettle black [ballotpedia.org]. (If you don't want to click on the link, there are currently 404 Federal judges appointed by Democrat Presidents, 391 by Republican.)

        Looking at the breakdown by President, it looks like the number of remaining Presidential appointments drops roughly in half for every 8 years that go by. If you apply that decay rate and assume an equal number of appointments each year, then the expected number of remaining judges appointed each 4-year term should be:

        2016 (Trump): 238
        2012 (Obama): 168
        2008 (Obama): 119
        2004 (Bush): 84
        2000 (Bush): 60
        1996 (Clinton): 42
        1992 (Clinton): 30
        1988 (HW Bush): 21
        1984 (Reagan): 15
        1980 (Reagan): 11
        1976 (Carter): 7

        Which adds up to an expected 428 Republican Appointees, 367 Democrat appointees. So if anything, the courts are currently stuffed with Democrat appointees (i.e. Republican appointees have not remained on the job as long as Democrat appointees on average). It's not insightful because it's just plain wrong.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by jbengt ( 874751 )
          By your link, 101 appeals court judges have been appointed by Republicans and 84 by Democrats, and 5 supreme court justices have been appointed by Republicans, while 4 have been appointed by Democrats. Since they can overrule the district courts, they are arguably more important.
          But mainly, any split based on Democrats/Republicans misses the actual quality and philosophy of the actual individual judges. More of the Trump appointments have been rated [ballotpedia.org] non-qualified by the ABA than previous presidents.
          You a

    • In total, there are between 2500 and 3500 federal judges - of whom 900 or so are Circuit or Appeals Article III judges (plus another 500 magistrates), while the other 2000 or so are Article I administrative judges (tax, immigration, etc). The count varies depending on exactly what you define a "Federal Judge" as.

      Trump has appointed 187 Article III judges and 15 Article I judges [wikipedia.org].

      That's not stuffing the Courts, not even close. Considering that in 2017, when Trump took office, roughly two-thirds of all Feder

  • that woman didn't burst into flames spewing that many lies in a single sentence.

  • The lawsuits are without merit.
    The FCC can make their own damned rules. The FCC can change their owned damned rules.

    Don't like it? THEN PASS A LAW.

  • Zero-rating (Score:3)

    by twocows ( 1216842 ) on Friday February 07, 2020 @02:55PM (#59702266)
    I've honestly never paid too much attention to the net neutrality debate, but I will say that, from a consumer's perspective, I actually really like zero-rating, which I believe would be illegal with true net neutrality. I always get the cheapest phone plan I can find and when services offer zero-rating as part of a plan, that's a huge value add when my monthly limit is fairly low. Then again, a lot of carriers use zero-rating as a way to push their own services or ones they're getting paid to push, so it's not like I don't see why it's anti-competitive, but that's not something I think your average end user's going to care about.
    • Thats fine. Meanwhile some of us are put in to the penalty bix and told we can't buy good internet without purchasing an exoensive television package. Fuck your zero rating.
    • Zero-Rating just means they give you Internet with conditions. NN just says every service & packet has to be treated equally. You can easily reconcile the two by requiring other subscriptions (e.g. get free Internet with a Hulu+ sub) or with embedded advertising.

      If bandwidth becomes a problem then you just cap it, which is perfectly compatible with NN.

      Companies did Zero-Rating for decades with NN, anyone who tells you that you can't have ZR & NN is lying to you in an effort to end NN.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jythie ( 914043 )
        Yeah, NN really does not change much about what you can charge your own customers, but instead controls how much you can charge other ISP's customers for access to your's.

    • but that's not something I think your average end user's going to care about

      Well yeah, that's the whole point. If the average end user cared about it then the problem could be addressed through market pressure. They don't, so that anti-competitive behavior needs to be addressed in other ways.

  • voted 3-2 to keep the internet in private hands...Republicans ONLY [thehill.com]supporting pay-to-play access

    • Surprise, the ruling is correct.
      FCC makes its own rules.
      If you want something to stick, get a law passed.
      Presidential decree is NOT an end run around the legislative process!
      See the states getting fucking laws passed. They're doing it correctly. Demand your state due the same, and then demand legislation at the federal level.
      The rules and regulations of all the TLAs in the executive branch are capricious, at best. I say 90% of them need to have their charters revoked and need to be disbanded. BUT UNTIL T

  • How has the net suffered over the past couple of years? I see articles where things like the following are said: "Ajit Pai continues to double down on the claim that killing net neutrality was a huge boon for American consumers, even if supporting evidence for that claim remains largely nonexistent" [0], however I am unaware of the evidence that supports the claim that this was a net negative. Enlighten me. [0] https://www.vice.com/en_us/art... [vice.com]

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jythie ( 914043 )
      I think a lot of companies are still nervous about pulling the trigger on things NN would prohibit, since it could still be reversed and screw up their plans. A lot of the stuff NN makes difficult is also extremely expensive and time consuming to implement, so they are holding off while things are still in flux. It also makes good PR if you can point to nothing happening and saying 'see, nothing happened!' when you start rolling out real changes.

    • I dont need to wait to see if there are negative effects, since I have seen no evidence, when deciding to not sell heroin in my supermarket. This is not a compelling or sane approach to mitigating abuse by local monopolies. The TV cable industry pioneered profiteering and that is relevant to what protections are advisable.

    • I recommend watching "Who F***ed up the Internet?!" on Hulu to learn more about why Net Neutrality is vitally important. The Wired article How the FCC's Net Neutrality Plan Breaks With 50 Years of History [wired.com] is also a good read.

      Once established case law prevents NN from being reintroduced the telcoms will be off their best behavior and will traffic shape for the highest bidders without consequence.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      Poor people got thinking the gov would ensure a private telco would upgrade their bandwidth for free.
      Poor city areas dont get national governments to pay for free bandwidth and new networking.
      The direction of the political "net neutrality" rules was to ensure everyone in the USA got some next gen bandwidth no matter the ISP networks profit level in the area.
      The gov rules would force private sector network spending to ensure "net neutrality" was granting equal network speeds.

      Not having "net neutrality"

  • I canceled my TV service... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by DewDude ( 537374 ) on Friday February 07, 2020 @03:26PM (#59702410) Homepage
    My 1gbps connection became 10mbps with 2gb month quota. They will not offer me unlimited without TV, they will not offer me gbos without TV. I have zero other options for providers.

    Fuck the FCC.

  • Comment removed (Score:3)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Friday February 07, 2020 @04:37PM (#59702616)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • We need industry to step up to the plate (Score:3)

    by hAckz0r ( 989977 ) on Friday February 07, 2020 @04:39PM (#59702618)

    Anti-NetNeutrality is a double edge sword, if the government won't help, you just have to know how to use it correctly to get what you need.

    The big network and content providers should create a simple pact/covenant. If any corporation attempted to penalize a member of that consortium, through Anti-NetNeutrality, then all signatory members would then be bound to penalize that offending company. It would be like a poison pill, in that, if you try to screw over any one member of the consortium then you will then have to deal with being penalized by ALL the other members. No Government mandate is even required. If GreedyCompany(tm) thinks they will get 'a free money grab', then they will instead be essentially forced off the Internet by exorbitant fees, very slow network speeds, or no web content. Paybacks are a b!tch.

    What we need is for the big players (Google, Facebook, Netflix, Microsoft, etc) to come to a written agreement, start signing up and we customers can apply pressure via our wallets and social pressure as well to get even more companies signed up.

  • And this is a surprise?
    Big business runs the Republican Party and they choose the Judges (one quarter of Federal judges have now been select by DerGropenFurer and validated by the Senate) so what do you expect? With the fiasco in Iowa the opposition has demonstrated that they are totally incapable of even counting.
    We will have Trump and his lackeys for decades to come and the USA will become a shithole country with the bomb.

    I am old - so I will be dead - enjoy your local wars.

Slashdot Top Deals

Living on Earth may be expensive, but it includes an annual free trip around the Sun.

Close