Biden DOJ Halts Trump Admin Lawsuit Against California Net Neutrality Rules (arstechnica.com) 131
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The Biden administration has abandoned a Trump-era lawsuit that sought to block California's net neutrality law. In a court filing today, the US Department of Justice said it "hereby gives notice of its voluntary dismissal of this case." Shortly after, the court announced that the case is "dismissed in its entirety" and "all pending motions in this action are denied as moot."
The case began when Trump's DOJ sued California in September 2018 in US District Court for the Eastern District of California, trying to block a state net neutrality law similar to the US net neutrality law repealed by the Ajit Pai-led FCC. Though Pai's FCC lost an attempt to impose a blanket, nationwide preemption of any state net neutrality law, the US government's lawsuit against the California law was moving forward in the final months of the Trump administration.
The Biden DOJ's voluntary dismissal of the case puts an end to that. "I am pleased that the Department of Justice has withdrawn this lawsuit," FCC Acting Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said today. "When the FCC, over my objection, rolled back its net neutrality policies, states like California sought to fill the void with their own laws. By taking this step, Washington is listening to the American people, who overwhelmingly support an open Internet, and is charting a course to once again make net neutrality the law of the land." The report notes that California still has to defend its net neutrality rules against a separate lawsuit filed by the major broadband-industry lobby groups. "The industry groups representing all the biggest ISPs and many smaller ones filed an amended complaint against California in August 2020, claiming the net neutrality law is 'unconstitutional state regulation,'" reports Ars.
The case began when Trump's DOJ sued California in September 2018 in US District Court for the Eastern District of California, trying to block a state net neutrality law similar to the US net neutrality law repealed by the Ajit Pai-led FCC. Though Pai's FCC lost an attempt to impose a blanket, nationwide preemption of any state net neutrality law, the US government's lawsuit against the California law was moving forward in the final months of the Trump administration.
The Biden DOJ's voluntary dismissal of the case puts an end to that. "I am pleased that the Department of Justice has withdrawn this lawsuit," FCC Acting Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said today. "When the FCC, over my objection, rolled back its net neutrality policies, states like California sought to fill the void with their own laws. By taking this step, Washington is listening to the American people, who overwhelmingly support an open Internet, and is charting a course to once again make net neutrality the law of the land." The report notes that California still has to defend its net neutrality rules against a separate lawsuit filed by the major broadband-industry lobby groups. "The industry groups representing all the biggest ISPs and many smaller ones filed an amended complaint against California in August 2020, claiming the net neutrality law is 'unconstitutional state regulation,'" reports Ars.
different form of net neutrality question (Score:2)
If they mandate neutrality on a federal level, what happens to the telcos currently not counting/bundling all the streaming data traffic into the plans for free? HBO Max for AT&T? T-mobile for Netflix?
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Zero rating will have to go away.
Internet access should be treated the same way that water, gas, and electricity is. A regulated fee structure where you pay a 'connection fee' that covers maintenance for everything up to and including your meter, then a 'unit charge' for what you use.
I'd gladly take that over a large fee that covers some amount of data then a usurious fee for overages. Where I am I get 550GB/month with the first 10GB over for $5 then $10 for every 10GB after that. Or you add another $15 o
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Speak for yourself, I have no data caps, and I don't want any. You shouldn't have any either. Maybe throttling beyond a certain point but no caps and no pay-as-you-go.
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Internet access should be treated the same way that water, gas, and electricity is. A regulated fee structure where you pay a 'connection fee' that covers maintenance for everything up to and including your meter, then a 'unit charge' for what you use.
I'd gladly take that over a large fee that covers some amount of data then a usurious fee for overages. Where I am I get 550GB/month with the first 10GB over for $5 then $10 for every 10GB after that. Or you add another $15 on the monthly fee for unlimited data.
I'd rather have a cheap ($10 month) connection fee and pay $0.03 per GB. The big benefit for a fixed connection fee and all usage metered is the desire to get you to use more metered data by increasing your connection speed. The way it is done now, there every reason for the ISP to slow your connection instead of speeding it up.
That'd be fine if Internet service was anything like water, gas, or electricity. It's not. It costs ISPs exactly the same to run an always-on broadband connection with zero data traversing it or saturated data traversing it. But more to the point, a malicious actor can't force you to consume the maximum amount of water or gas or electricity that your service can provide for every hour of the day all month long, whereas a malicious actor CAN DDoS your Internet connection into oblivion. And you would get
Re:different form of net neutrality question (Score:5, Insightful)
That's a clear case where a company is using their positions to hamstring competition. Lets say your electric company owned a lightbulb company too. They made a special bulb that can be plugged into an unmetered circuit in your house. It would not be very surprising if suddenly everyone bought those bulbs and the competition floundered. Short term, that's good for consumers, long term after the other competition is gone, maybe not.
Social media and streaming systems have the same problems. If I can stream YouTube all day long for no extra cost, but Vimeo ate into my bandwidth and I can only stream it for say 10 hours before being charged, the little guy has no chance.
Facepalm. They STILL don't get it. (Score:3)
Quoting TFS:
"the US net neutrality law repealed by the Ajit Pai-led FCC"
They STILL it's the job of commission to pass and repeal bills.
Do schools not show "how a bill becomes a law" anymore?
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Do schools not show "how a bill becomes a law" anymore?
They don't. All we get nowadays are late night comedy shows riffing on it.
Nobody shows the Disney short featuring Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and Goofy about how to drive on interstate highways, either. Disney created it in the late '50s when the interstate system was new. That one should also be required viewing.
Can't be right (Score:1)
What, that can't be right. Biden's admin did something that wasn't just woke nonsense?
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Not at all! Net neutrality disproportionately benefits the poor and marginalised: anyone who isn't wealthy enough to own their own ISP will be rewarded, at the expense of those who do!
You should know by now - there's always a "woke" angle. (And rarely is it a bad one.)
Re:So the ISPs have to be "neutral" (Score:5, Insightful)
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That's what you mean when you say "network neutrality".
Unfortunately the term is one of those that has come to mean whatever you want it to mean - different people give different answers; NN means whatever it is that you support.
Except of course what you said is NOT what you really mean.
You don't actually mean that if Joe Asshole sets up racks of servers sending out ten million spams an hour, your local ISP has to hook him up and accept his spam, spewing it in the internet, and Protomail has to accept those
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The sole exception being a guy who INSISTED that TCP packets are carried inside of UDP packets.
LOL so close to the truth and yet so wrong.
Re:So the ISPs have to be "neutral" (Score:5, Informative)
That's not the issue here. Net neutrality is mostly about being able to charge extra for access to certain services, or favour their own services to stifle competition.
For example they might make their own video streaming service "zero rated" so it doesn't count towards you data cap, while Netflix does. They might decide that YouTube 4k uses too much bandwidth and charge you can extra $10/month to enable it.
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I'm an exhibitionist. We can chat right here!
You go first.
Re:So the ISPs have to be "neutral" (Score:5, Informative)
If Twitter can do it, then so can a phone company. Congratulations!
Wow. I've never realized how deeply moronic you are!
Do you even understand the difference between an ISP and a social media company? Or do you just click the "Internets" icon and think that Twitter is "The Internets"?
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Do you even understand the difference between an ISP and a social media company?
They have to willfully and aggressively misunderstand it to support their argument in favor of cancelling social media.
Re:So the ISPs have to be "neutral" (Score:4, Interesting)
Are the "Che Guevara fans and other Communists" planning a coup, doxxing people, making violent threats against individuals and groups, and otherwise violating the TOS? If the answer is "yes" then they should get the boot as well. If they're not then you're comparing apples and grapefruits again.
And therein lies the difference between liberals/progressives and conservatives/neo-cons. You automatically think that we'd support people promoting violence because "they're on our side", because that's what you would do. You're wrong, and you will permanently refuse to ever believe to the contrary. Violence is wrong, whether committed by the left or the right.
"Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent." - Hari Seldon
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The answers are certainly "yes", and, of "course, they should be booted" (or, better yet, "nobody should be"), but that's irrelevant — because the TOS are not laws and are up to these private companies to enforce/revise as they see fit.
We agree, that Twitter ought to retain t
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You were justifying violence for months last year
I was? Your link was the first time that I ever visited that [grabien.com] web site, and the video isn't me, so you're full of crap. I have never promoted violence on Twitter, I don't even have a Twitter account so it would be a bit difficult (and loathe the platform anyway). Who defended Scalise's shooting? I have to date **NEVER** seen anyone saying that it was in any way a good thing on any of the various web sites that I frequent, some of them pretty left-wing. Plenty of people calling him a scumb
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As I said above, and which you have shown to be true yet again, "You automatically think that we'd support people promoting violence because "they're on our side", because that's what you would do."
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As I said above, and which you have shown to be true yet again:
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Well, I guess you got me. Must be because we all march in lockstep wearing Lenin hats and quoting from the 'Little Red Book'. /sarcasm
Really, I started this saying "Violence is wrong" and yet you insist that I embrace violence and anyone left of Ronald Reagan how commits violence. There's something seriously wrong with you.
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Pretty much. Oh, you may not like Lenin, but you do like Che Guevara, don't you? Perhaps, even Angela Davis. Probably, even have a T-shirt or two in your closet with the romantic beret, don't you? Definitely would not challenge anyone wearing one, not even think poorly of them — whereas seeing someone in a MAGA hat will cause you to say something.
And though you may not attack such a MAGA-wearer yourself, y
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I sometimes wonder why the gods didn't make stupidity painful.
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At least, this come back, though just as universal — and thus meaningless — is better, than the earlier "go fuck yourself" you gave, when I exposed your hypocrisy.
All you had to do to prove me wrong, was link to an earlier post of yours denouncing political violence before January 6th...
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You become self-inconsistent when you deny ISPs the same rights to discriminate.
There's nothing inconsistent about it. Are roads built using the same legal construction code as buildings? No, that would be absurd. A different set of rules and standards is required for the construction of roads. ISPs are the "roads" of the internet, and platforms like Twitter are the "buildings". You may decide I'm not allowed in your building, but I still might need to use the road in front, to drive past it.
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What may be confusing you, is that most roads are publicly-owned, so it seems ridiculous to you, that someone may be banned from using them.
But the ISPs are private — which breaks your analogy into pieces.
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Ever hear of “toll roads”? While that should be fine to redeem my analogy in your interpretation of it, my point was that when you’re offering differing services to the public, whether that be constructing roads, building houses, preparing food, or making fluffy bunny pillows, different rules apply.
You can’t tell the health inspector to GTFO from your restaurant because the granite slab factory across the street is filthy, and you believe it’s inconsistent for your business to
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Most of them are publicly owned too. Your analogy is still crap.
Ah, is not that great! Different rules, eh?
Well, if "different rules" are Ok with you, maybe, then, it is Ok to reexamine the latitude given to Twitter and Facebook to ban whomever they want to ban?
Alright, if saddling restaurants with health inspections is
Re: So the ISPs have to be "neutral" (Score:1)
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If Twitter can do it, then so can a phone company. Congratulations!
That is not what net neutrality is about, nor is that what the law says.
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That is a stupid example.
In this analogy, Twitter is not the phone company. It is someone you call or who may call you. And yes, if they don't want to take your call, it is absolutely their right not to pick up the phone, or to simply block yore number. Likewise, you don't have to pick up the phone when they call. And you absolutely have the right to block their number too.
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Hey, a great opening statement, asshole!
Twitter being a private company is used, repeatedly, as a justification for their banning whomever the feel like banning [ctpost.com]. Because they are private, their actions don't violate the First Amendment [king5.com] are otherwise perfectly fine.
Phone companies and ISPs are private companies too. What's good for the goose, is good for the gander. Congratulations.
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You mean like AT&T disconnecting the Parler offices only a few weeks ago?
This is the first I've heard about this. Link?
The Obama admin made it so carriers would no longer be classified as common carriers under FCC
Emmmm.. no. That was Trump. Trump did that: [wikipedia.org]
On December 14, 2017, under a new presidential administration, the FCC reversed its own rules on net neutrality, essentially revoking common carrier status as a requirement for internet service providers.
The Obama admin did exactly the opposite:
Using provisions of the Communications Act of 1934, the FCC classified Internet service providers as common carriers, effective June 12, 2015, for the purpose of enforcing net ne
Re: So the ISPs have to be "neutral" (Score:2)
Those old tools will be discarded.
False equivalency. (Score:5, Insightful)
So the ISPs have to be "neutral" but the large tech companies (Facebook/Twitter/Google/Apple) are allowed to establish monopolistic positions and kick people off for any reason whatsoever?
The problem with this comparison is that you can always go to a different website but you can't always use a different ISP. It's the difference between someone refusing to answer a call from you and the phone company deciding who you should be allowed to call.
Re:False equivalency. (Score:5, Informative)
This is basically the original definition: [wikipedia.org]
"Net neutrality is the principle that an internet service provider (ISP) has to provide access to all sites, content and applications at the same speed, under the same conditions without blocking or preferencing any content. Under net neutrality, whether you connect to Netflix, Internet Archive, or a friend's blog, your ISP has to treat them all the same. Without net neutrality, an ISP can decide what information you are exposed to. Proponents argue that this could cause an increase in monetary charges for companies such as Netflix in order to stream their content."
We're arguing over whether an ISP can determine which applications exist, that's where the argument stops. You want to drag the argument into the apps, and whether a publisher has the right to enforce a terms of service contract.
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GP said
The problem with this comparison is that you can always go to a different website but you can't always use a different ISP.
Your definition doesn't mention anything like this. It's moving the goalposts.
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So how much competition does the ISP industry need before you admit that Net Neutrality becomes irrelevant? When the majority of Americans have access to two ISPs? Three? Four?
We're arguing over whether an ISP can determine which applications exist, that's where the argument stops. You want to drag the argument into the apps, and whether a publisher has the right to enforce a terms of service contract.
Why should Facebook Messenger be exempt from Net Neutrality, while VoIP carriers still to comply? After all, I have jobs that require using Messenger. I don't have any jobs that require VoIP phone service. Facebook is critical infrastructure now. Why should a private company get to block people from being able to do a job?
What about
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The ISP is the road and Facebook is the store on the road. Without access to the road, you will never get to Facebook.
Whether Facebook should be nationalized or otherwise regulated is a different conversation and doesn';t matter if your ISP decides you can't use Facebook messenger but instead have to use their messaging service.
Think of if Amazon owned the roads and only allowed Amazon owned delivery vehicles to use it, wouldn't matter about other stores as you would have no access.
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1: You're moving the goalposts. The argument for net neutrality never involved "you can't always use a different ISP". The argument for Net Neutrality is about censorship, throttling, and fairness.
Nope. The argument for Net Neutrality has ALWAYS been the inability to use another ISP on a whim. If I don't like Facebook I can switch to a plethora of its clones or abandon it entirely (I did, I only use email and Signal to talk to my actual friends).
Most of the US (around 67%) has a choice of ONE broadband provider. There is no free market of ISPs.
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The argument for Net Neutrality has ALWAYS been the inability to use another ISP on a whim
The FCC's Open Internet Order disagrees.
There is no free market of ISPs.
You're confusing "free market" with competition or perfect competition. When infrastructure is expensive and it does not make sense to have redundant infrastructure, it makes perfect sense that there might be one provider in a free market.
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The FCC's Open Internet Order disagrees.
How to tell that a conservative hack is lying? Answer: its lips are moving! Let me quote the text of the order, the relevant part starts on page 31 (section 80). Page 32 states explicitly:
Additionally, 45 percent of households have only a single provider option for 25 Mbps/3 Mbps broadband service, indicating that 45 percent of households do not have any choices to switch to at this critical level of service.
https://transition.fcc.gov/Dai... [fcc.gov]
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You said
The argument for Net Neutrality has ALWAYS been the inability to use another ISP on a whim
This suggests to me that competition is an essential component of your argument. It doesn't even appear in the Executive Summary.
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Tell me, in one paragraph, what is the purpose of Net Neutrality?
Now if I asked someone at random to go to the FCC OIO and pick out a paragraph explaining the purpose of Net Neutrality, what are the chances that the paragraph looks like yours, or mentions competition in the ISP market?
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Tell me, in one paragraph, what is the purpose of Net Neutrality?
All of the reasons listed in the document: - Clear, Bright-Line Ruler
- No Unreasonable Interference or Unreasonable Disadvantage to Consumers or Edge Providers
- Enhanced Transparency
People like you can't understand that, alas. You are in thrall to corporations and love being raped to promote "free market" with 1 competitor.
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- Clear, Bright-Line Ruler
- No Unreasonable Interference or Unreasonable Disadvantage to Consumers or Edge Providers
- Enhanced Transparency
Sure, and these are problems that customers face with social media networks, too. So if we're going to be fair, then Net Neutrality also needs to apply to Facebook and Twitter.
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The ISP is the road, the social media companies are private clubs that you use the road to get to. Without equal access to the road, it doesn't matter about the social media companies.
Whether the social media companies should also be regulated is a different discussion and off topic when talking about the roads.
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I'm old enough to remember when Burger King put out a video where customers were charged a convenience fee for faster burgers.
The Internet is not comparable to roads. But fine, I'll entertain your analogy:
What good are equal access roads if all the places you want to drive to have lines to get in unless you pay a cover fee to skip them?
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Well, currently discriminating on the basis of money is legal and it is likely that someone will see it as an opportunity to have a business without needing a cover fee to skip the lines. It's likely that Burger King ran into McDonald's advertising that everyone is treated equally and it was more successful, so Burger King dropped the fee to get into the front of the line to be more competitive.
It is also possible for society to decide that it isn't fair and try to pass laws against it. Whether the courts d
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1: You're moving the goalposts. The argument for net neutrality never involved "you can't always use a different ISP".
No it's not. The fundamental argument for net neutrality has always been lack of competition due to the market nature of ISPs controlling the transit to the customer. Not being able to simply deal with another party is the core principle behind why this market needs regulation to prevent abuse. If everyone was free to chose whomever they wanted then we wouldn't be having net neutrality discussions.
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Not only that, but if articles we've seen on slashdot are to be believed, ISP's have blocked competition by blocking access to these poles.
As far as I'm concerned if the ISP's are going to use property that we the people allow them to use, then we can have laws that benefit us, the peop
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So if all Americans had a choice of 2+ ISPs, Net Neutrality would become irrelevant? If not, then at what number does Net Neutrality become unnecessary?
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Well I clearly don't have a choice of 42 social media networks, so Facebook, Twitter, Google, and Apple need to follow Net Neutrality too. Is that fair?
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False equivalence. Nothing fundamentally prevents you from creating a social network. Your neighbors suing/shooting you for digging up their yards prevents you from creating an ISP.
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Your neighbors suing/shooting you for digging up their yards prevents you from creating an ISP.
My personal recommendation is that next time you purchase a house, you purchase one that touches public property, like, you know- a street.
Joking aside, We've got ~12,000 fiber customers. Of which, we did the actual municipal build-out (including digging, trenching, etc) for about 8,000 of them.
Never once did we need to get someone's permission to get someone else internet- excluding, obviously, sublets.
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But I guarantee you got the city's permission for the underground trenching, and permission from whoever owns the poles (which may be a competing ISP who can make your life miserable). And I guarantee you had to get the other utilities to mark their lines, who can then cause arbitrarily large delays, can try to block permitting if they feel like it, etc. Yes, you don't literally have to ask every person for permission because of public rights of way, but the permitting process for using those public righ
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As for other utilities- yes, site locates are necessary.
And I guarantee you had to get the other utilities to mark their lines, who can then cause arbitrarily large delays, can try to block permitting if they feel like it, etc.
Never seen that happen. Unsure what their goal would be. The alternative is that we break their lines on accident.
Yes, you don't literally have to ask every person for permission because of public rights of way, but the permitting process for using those public rights of way exists precisely because people don't like having a hundred companies digging up their yards, and this tends to result in a fairly low limit on the number of ISPs can exist within a given area.
City permission isn't the hangup, I promise you.
It's difficulty of competition.
People are not quick to change internet providers, and it's not like we're *really* offering something different.
And there are also economy-of-scale reasons why having a large number of ISPs is infeasible(*).
I'm beginning to get the feeling
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Incorrect. Nothing prevents you from creating an ISP.
Me, on the other hand, I can release a completely working social network (there's plenty of open source ones you can setup right now), but unless I have the user base, nobody is going to join it.
Maybe you have no friends, but I can't just jump ship onto another social network the same way I can an ISP. And a lot of other people face the same choice.
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I haven't looked though all of your posts, but you seem to be obliquely arguing either that NN is obsolete or that social media companies should be treated like common carriers. ISPs operate nearly as monopolies and they are supposed to do one thing: provide internet service. Telephone companies are a pretty good analog and while we have many more telephone carrier options than ISPs, telcos are still treated like common carriers under most circumstances. At bottom, these rules exist because people using
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I just want someone to propose a Fair and Reasonable Standard for when the government can and cannot say "you must carry this customer and you can't throttle/censor them".
When Twitter bans some prominent person and I complain "This is corporate censorship" I inevitably get the retort "The first amendment doesn't protect private speech!" (which is odd because I never mentioned 1A, but) Yes, that is completely correct.
But the same argument also applies to Comcast, Facebook, T-Mobile. From my perspective as a
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If you're proposing that pay-for-use should be subject to enforced Net Neutrality and ad-supported use can be exempt, that sounds like a huge perverse incentive for more ads and more tracking.
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Net neutrality is whether ISP's are common carriers or not. In true net neutrality, the ISPs are common carriers under the telecommunications banner, which they've been classified since before there was an Internet. The ISP's are simply giving you a 'special phone line' that can push bits instead of voice.
The NN rules that Obama and California and anyone with D after their name pushes is to take away the common carrier rules and put them under a different banner exclusively for Internet providers which woul
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Not exactly. ISPs are classified as Information Services, not Telecommunications Services, under the Telecommunications Act of 1996. The FCC arbitrarily decided to reclassify them as a Telecom so they could get increased regulatory power, despite of Congress' definition.
It's not the FCC's job to make up rules they want to see. They have to enforce the law that Congress wrote.
Re: False equivalency. (Score:1)
Can you please link me to a YouTube DIY ISP video please? K thanks.
Re: False equivalency. (Score:1)
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You need network engineers, and they're expensive.
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Having been the senior engineer of one such company for going on 15 years now, I can assure you the thing you listed aren't even a laughably tiny drop in the bucket of our costs.
Rent, and circuit leasing (dark, or transport), and labor. I'm not a cheap commodity.
Joe schmoe can't afford me, and he can't do what I do, either.
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A) I'm well aware that both my home ISP, and the ISP I *work* for are private entities- so that's certainly not a point I'd ever argue.
B) I literally did build this ISP.
C) I *do* block anything I feel violates our T&C.
C) I'm pretty entitled to use its property
All that aside, you should take a breath before composing your next sentence. And lose the caps. It makes you look stupid.
Separate issues (Score:5, Insightful)
Net neutrality is a good idea no matter how the other tech companies are regulated.
Re:Separate issues (Score:4, Insightful)
ISPs and telcos are common carriers, unlike social networks. They don't have a right to tamper with your first amendment right of free association. Or at least, they didn't while NN laws persisted.
Why are people like you trying to destroy the internet? You don't like NN, you don't like Section 230, you don't like anything that permits the internet to function for the masses. Is it simple elitism?
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ISPs and telcos are common carriers, unlike social networks. They don't have a right to tamper with your first amendment right of free association. Or at least, they didn't while NN laws persisted.
Unfortunately the courts went through some mental gymnastics and somehow magically excluded Internet service from common carrier status. It damn well should be subject to common carrier rules, which were established in a law called the Telecommunications Act, not the Wired Phone Company Act, but it isn't. Neither is cellular service.
There's a reason AT&T and the other usual suspects have been abandoning traditional copper pairs as fast as they can. They're subject to common carrier laws and a great d
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Net neutrality is unconstitutional since they have a first amendment right if free association.
Fixed that for you.
Wow, suddenly I'm in favor of socializing internet access. Thanks for turning me into a communist, jackass.
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Social media and ISPs are two different things, imagine that.
Re:So the ISPs have to be "neutral" (Score:4, Interesting)
Net Neutrality is about whether an ISP should have the ability to dictate which applications may exist on the internet.
It was and has never been about the whether private enterprise -- the publishers of those applications -- should be allowed to exercise their 1A rights.
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But the large tech companies (Facebook/Twitter/Google/Apple) are allowed to establish monopolistic positions
"Mono" means one. You just listed FOUR.
None of them are monopolies.
Of the four, Google has the largest market share, but it is also the easiest to abandon. I use Google but could switch to Bing or DuckDuckGo in 5 seconds.
Re:So the ISPs have to be "neutral" (Score:5, Informative)
But the large tech companies (Facebook/Twitter/Google/Apple) are allowed to establish monopolistic positions and kick people off for any reason whatsoever?
You listed FOUR companies. None of them is mandatory, I'm not on Facebook or Twitter, I barely use Google and I've stopped using Apple.
My girlfriend's home area has _ONE_ provider. Not four. ONE. They can't switch off of it. My house has a separate fiber connection to the exchange point that cost me $50k to build and $1000 a month to run, the ONLY other alternative is Comcast.
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Most people also have access to 3/4/5G and satellite. Hence not a monopoly by FEC rules, only by FCC rules. Federal NN rules pushed ISPs under the FEC oversight criterion.
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Most people also have access to 3/4/5G and satellite.
3/4/5G do not provide the same level of service (especially in cities), the regular phone connections are also not classified as "broadband" by the FCC. So no, people do not have a choice.
Legacy satellite technically works, but only "technically". In reality it's even less of a choice than 3/4/5G.
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I believe the term you meant was "for breaking the terms of service conditions".
But yes, of course they are. Thats the free market. Are you really THAT opposed to American Capitalism that you'd force people to be bombarded with political propaganda they dont want?
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But the large tech companies (Facebook/Twitter/Google/Apple) are allowed to establish monopolistic positions and kick people off for any reason whatsoever?
Kind of, yes, but become too monopolistic and other laws kick in, so it is not quite as black and white as you try to portray it.
Hint: An ISP is a carrier. Facebook et al are not. There is a difference, and it matters. A lot.
Re:So the ISPs have to be "neutral" (Score:4, Informative)
Yes, just like Starbucks employees are allowed to tell you to piss off if you're not wearing a mask, but your local water company can't turn off your water supply for the same reason.
Here's a word you can look up in a dictionary: utility.
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It is possible the city is in violation of the California Public Utilities Code, but apparently government owned utilities (or the local governments that run them) in California have a special power to abuse their customers that investor owned utilities do not have.
Cities can adopt ordinances that send people to jail, in CA depriving offenders of their water and power without laws, authorizing ordinances, or due process is apparently not a problem.
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Governments can only be sued if they allow themselves to be sued. Hence why public works of any sorts is generally a bad idea.
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Companies can only be sued if they allow you to sue them, and currently it is pretty popular that companies add something to their terms of use that you can't sue them, so private works are a bad idea, can't even vote their leadership out, unlike public works.
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The days of 128 to 1 oversubscription are over except for the most backwards of ISPs. Even comcast delivers 100 down / 12 up without fail to me in the middle of nowhere.
But if I were running a limited scale community ow
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The days of 128 to 1 oversubscription are over except for the most backwards of ISPs. Even comcast delivers 100 down / 12 up without fail to me in the middle of nowhere.
Yeah, too bad about Suddenlink. Mind you, I get at least 200 down most of the time. But I'm paying for 400, and never get it. And they also sell "Gigabit" which is also 200. Oh good.
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But if I were running a limited scale community owned ISP, not being able to extract modest fees out of Google, Hulu and Netflix for network priority and the 85% share of limited bandwidth would be a business model killer.
That is a complete falsehood. Municipal broadband systems are able to provide superior service at a reduced cost while respecting network neutrality. Only greed prevents this model from "working".
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Municipal broadband works to a point. It's definitely not a panacea because after they become larger and more visible, more (politician) cooks in the kitchen means eventually it goes to die. And since the government is in charge, they can deny viable competition while crapping all over their customers and use tax payer money to subsidize out the competition.
And yes, there are some good municipal broadband systems, but they tend to be small and manageable. Once they grow, they become unwieldy corrupt messes,
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Once they grow, they become unwieldy corrupt messes, like everything else the government does.
Do you have an example of a municipal ISP that became an unwieldy corrupt mess, or has the inevitable not yet occured?
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Rome didn't burn to the ground, it was overrun by Barbarians, much like the US and Europe today.