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Verizon Challenges FCC's Net Neutrality Rules
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."
I think that all of the net neutrality challengers should get together and head over to http://www.privateislandsonline.com/oceania.htm, where they could buy a volcanic island. Perfect for the super villain that has everything except an evil lair!
/. 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!!!
Once set up,
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.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
Who can?
I thought Verizon worked with Google to get these rules in place in the first place. WTF?
... they scare me.
A mixture of ignorance, paranoia and just plain hate.
They start off with "The OBAMINATION Dictatorship is planning to squelch the Civil War that will come next Summer by starting to CENSOR FREE SPEECH on the Internet!" And then somehow get worse.
Let them filter and throttle their private network, but if so connection to the public one is prohibited.
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.
you dipstick.
And all that taxpayer funded copper and fiber.
Net Neutrality aside, the issue here is the US Constitution. Those of you who are quick to grant the Executive branch of government that much far-reaching authority while you cheerlead the current president need to imagine that power in the hands of someone like Rick Perry.
Worse yet, Congress voted on Net Neutrality and voted it down. They said no. Like it or not, that's law, folks.
The FCC has abused power and this needs to be thrown out, and Julius should be frog marched out of his office.
If you want to go back and discuss the benefits and pitfalls of Net Neutrality, please do so without violating the word and intent of the rule of law.
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...
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
New companies see the consumers broadband connection as a free resource to exploit. The ISPs would like these companies to share in the burden they are placing on their networks.
That, my friend, is a detestable rewording of the issues intended to evoke sympathy from the masses.
Share the burden? Exploit resources for free? That's called framing. Was that your intent?
New companies see the consumers broadband connection as a resource the consumers have paid for.
New companies see the consumers broadband connection as a resource the consumers will use to get goods and services.
People thinking about starting new companies see an opportunity to start new business using the consumers broadband connection to deliver goods and services.
People thinking about starting new companies can create innovative new products and services using the consumers broadband connection.
Let's all go back to the pre-iPhone model where the telcos were gatekeepers of phone apps. In those days you were lucky to get Tetris on a phone. It wasn't the vibrant ecology of business we now have, but at least no one was "exploiting" the user's "resource".
Grow some integrity. Get a job working for someone who doesn't pay you to lie.
The only reason Verizon even cares to get this struck down is that they want to charge extra for tethering. If you can connect any device to their network, and that device just happens to support tethering, than they can't charge you or ban you for doing so if the open regulations can be enforced. If they're not enforceable, Verizon, et al., can go on price gouging their customers for features where they add no value.
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.
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.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
encrypt everything
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.
That's a valid concern, which is why the law requires regulations like this to be published in the Federal Register for a certain length of time before they go into effect, and courts have the power when a challenge is made, if certain criteria are met, to prevent the regulation from going into effect until the challenge is resolved.
and a variety of slow, expensive, crappy alternatives. (I've tried DSL. Sucks balls) Which is almost as bad as having no alternatives, and certainly does not constitute healthy competition or a free marketplace.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
I find it deeply frustrating when these companies behave like this. You look and just feel helpless. What can you do? They have millions of dollars and probably lots of connections in the legal world. I want to believe that we lowly humans have some kind of liberty against them. Anyone have any thoughts?
I wonder if the FCC wouldn't have better luck by regulating advertising claims. I'm neither a lawyer nor American so I'm not sure what legal rights/responsibilities they have, but would they (or some other friendly government entity) be able to write a standardized definition of the phrase "broadband internet access" and insist that ISPs not mislead consumers by offering them something they aren't really getting?
Most of the important requirements of net neutrality are, after all, just restatements of what internet access is supposed to be.
It might also be useful if they could provide a working definition for "minimum available bandwidth", i.e., the minimum bandwidth the user can expect to actually receive when the network is at its most busy, and require ISPs to provide this information (as well, of course, as any applicable data caps and/or "fair use" policies) to potential customers in plain terms.
(It probably isn't economically practicable for ISPs to economically provide a specified minimum bandwidth at all times, but something like a 99th-percentile system might work well. One of the other practical problems with creating a workable definition is that bandwidth to any particular remote host might be limited at the other end, and it may be difficult to unambiguously define where "this end" stops and "the other end" begins; hopefully, though, the experts could come up with something.)