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First Lawsuits Challenging FCC's New Net Neutrality Rules Arrive
An anonymous reader writes: A small ISP based in Texas and an industry trade group have become the first to file lawsuits challenging the FCC's recent net neutrality rules. The trade group, USTelecom, argues that the regulations are not "legally sustainable." Alamo Broadband claims it is facing "onerous requirements" by operating under Title II of the Communications Act. Such legal challenges were expected, and are doubtless the first of many — but few expected them to arrive so soon. While some of the new rules were considered "final" once the FCC released them on March 12, others don't go into effect until they're officially published in the Federal Register, which hasn't happened yet.
The Alamo Broadband complaint reads as follows:
Alamo seeks relief on the grounds that the Order: (1) is in excess of the Commission's authority; (2) is arbitrary, capricious, and an abuse of discretion within the meaning of the Administrative Procedure Act; (3) is contrary to constitutional right; and (4) is otherwise contrary to law.
That's about as generic as it can get. I don't see it going anywhere.
to not recognize that more government control of the Internet is a good thing.
To all conservatives, more government regulation is uniformly bad.
To all liberals, more government regulation is uniformly good.
And so there we have the two sides, one pressing us to a feudal-style Private Police State run by Corporate Fascists, the other into a Authoritarian Police State Run by Big Government and Corporate Citizens. Either way we are already good and fucked regardless of who you vote for.
To all conservatives, more government regulation is uniformly bad.
To all liberals, more government regulation is uniformly good.
What a simplistic caricature of the positions.
A government's role should be: (pick one)
1. Break up monopolies, reduce barriers to market entry, and encourage competition, or
2. Regulate the behavior of monopolies.
Net Neutrality attempts to do #2.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
> To all liberals, more government regulation is uniformly good.
Bullcrap. Sane liberalism says that the government puts in only the regulation that is *needed* and put on the people that can do the most harm. I know of NO liberal that wants regulation for the sake of regulation.
Your portrayal of conservatives is wrong as well. Most conservatives seem to be fine with regulation as long it is on people they don't like and want to punish. They seem to want the people who can do the most harm have the least regulation (for money purposes) and tend to NOT care about regulation on individuals and small business, the very people who can do the LEAST harm.
The fact you are parroting these political stereotypes means you listen to a very limited group of people.
I keep seeing people say that and i have to wonder, if they did such a great job, why do they need to fix it. Its like health care and evil HMOs. The government pushed them to drop the cost of Medicare then had to fix that too.
You may not like what was said, but that just means reality sucks.
the irony of you calling out his generalizations by making other generalizations
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
the governments role should be to
ensure that the people who belong to this country are safe
ensure everyone has equal opportunities (not equal outcomes)
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
I wasn't aware that there were only two choices ever. Even in the overly restrictive American two-party system, there are differences in views on both the left and right about how far to go. I would posit that the Republican Party, and the Conservative/Right Wing in general has more coherence in their views, but I can easily think of examples where some of them want more government regulation (generally with enforcing morality or attempting to do so). As for the left, there's a reason that Will Rogers has a famous quote, "I am not a member of any organized political party. I am a Democrat." There are more politicians of both parties that certainly meet those standards, but let's not tar them all with the same brush, and let's certainly not decry the entire political spectrum of belief on those lines.
Furthermore, it is entirely possible that someone may believe we are too far, or not far enough, along the acceptable spectrum of government regulation or involvement on a given issue, without supporting the maximal end point. "Government regulation" is not a binary thing, and we're not stuck choosing between totalitarianism and anarchy. Just because I might think that we need more FCC action to encourage competition in the ISP market doesn't mean I want to see the ISPs nationalized and run by the Government, just in the same way that if I think that there's too much regulation it doesn't mean I want complete anarchy, either.
To all conservatives...
Ahem, that should read "To all Republicans..." I'm pretty damn conservative, and I think Republicans are some of a stupidest fucks to walk the planet. We're not one and the same, I can still freely admit when and where the Government does a good job without crapping myself.
the Fifth Circuit has 8 female judges.
2. Regulate the behavior of monopolies. Net Neutrality attempts to do #2.
In which market is Alamo Broadband a monopoly?
I know of no government granted monopoly status to ISPs. Comcast/TW/etc are defacto (not dejure) monopolies in cable television delivered internet service. Verizon/whatever are dejure monopolies on telephone-company provided ISPs. There exist many ISPs in the same markets as all of the previously mentioned companies. There are even ISPs that can provide ISP service via DSL over those dejure telco monopoly systems.
Do the FCC net neutrality rules actually limit themselves to places where there are actually defacto or dejure monopolies, or do they apply to every ISP? If they apply to every ISP, then they are not regulating the actions of monopolies, they are regulating many non-monopolies as well.
I'm fascinated by the FCC response to a filing that had to take place within ten days of their action and only happened close to the end of those ten days: "premature". Sorry FCC, you don't get to tell people they filed too early just because they filed within the very short deadline.
Yeah the government built an interstate so obviously they deserve full credit for my supermarket which depends on having products delivered from all over. Back to Obama's "You didn't build that" huh?
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
equal opportunities means that no one is barred for doing X. whether one can afford to do X is another story completely
By trying to equalize outcomes you do a couple things. You teach a portion of the public that they dont have to do anything because the government will take care of them. this is bad because the cycle gets worse not better
You should not be punishing people who do right, which is what happens why you try and equalize outcomes
Lets take sports for example, I would never want to see equal outcomes in sports, it would kill the game. patriots won the superbowl last year? well, we cant let them win again until all the other teams get a win, because, you know fairness. Plain and simple that is wrong on so many levels
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Does this bother you as much as it does me?
It is unfortunate that so many of our laws are so poorly written that one's political stance can have such an effect on the interpretation of the law.
"Well, this is what they wrote, but what did they really mean, and how can I twist it to meet my own personal political views?"
Love sees no species.
Simple, it has become a political thing. Despite my warnings ( as loud as I could make them but OK not that loud ), to keep arguing it as a nonpartisan issue. THe opponents of net neutrality have an advantage that we who support it do not. Once net neutrality is gone, it will be hard to bring back. The ISP cartel knew this and were fighting very hard for politicization to happen.
Instead of, for example, arguing that this action swaps in one set of regulations for another, ( In fact the old set gave all the power to the ISP cartels, and they took us from #1 internet service to middle of the rtoad. ) some proponents let the ISP cartels make it a political issue. The fact is that some people would rather have Title II as a political argument instead of actually having the ISPs be controlled by Title II.
So here is what will happen, the ISP cartel will tie up the implementation for the next two years in court. Then who becomes President? Hillary? Seems to be imploding right in front of us. John Kerry? The guy who helped bring back the cold war. and Al Queda in the form of ISIS and who couldn't win before? Joe Biden. The guy whose interactions with women is so creepy he makes BIll Clinton seem normal.
here is an interesting fact for you , since World War II there has only been one person elected as President that came from the same party as the sitting President-- Bush (41) (following Reagan).
So we have a Republican, who when the next seat on the FCC comes up names a Republican FCC member who replaces a Democrat. The new Chairman becomes Ajit Pai. Bye bye net neutrality.
This sounds like a pre-made lawsuit, something the Kocks would fund. The conspiracy theorist in me says that this suit was just ready to go, probably when the FCC first started talking about net neutrality. This tiny ISP is being used because it's a "small business"...if Comcast / Cox / AT&T filed this it would be even harder to push. And it's no coincidence it's in Texas either. Someone needs to start digging around and find out who is REALLY funding this...as I doubt this ISP is using their own profits to pursue this.
And the government created that too. And the government decided eventually that confining the internet to just academia (as the NSFNET was) didn't make sense so they closed down the NSFNET and the main links changed to be commercial instead of government paid.
This period you speak of where the ARPANET was the backbone for a network that was generally used never existed. The NSFNET started out around 1987 and you didn't see any real commercial use of the internet until the early 90s. Even CIX (ANS) came in 1991 with the help of the NSF. After Congress (including Al Gore) passed legislation pushing the NSF to repeal its restrictions on commercial use you saw significant commercial uses take off.
Today's internet is in no way an unintended consequence. It may not have been paid for by the government, but they did design and develop it and were well aware of the possibilities beyond academia.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
That's as asinine as a communist claiming that if you start your own business, it will be a given that you'll dump toxic waste into the river while sexually harassing your secretary. Because other business owners have done that and the communist has an axe to grind.
The government passed regulations on seat belts, lead paint, asbestos, DDT, and of course the FCC which has thus far prevented NBC from trying to edge out ABC with more powerful transmitters. It didn't cause civilization to collapse, capitalism to be banned, or Zombie Stalin to come for your stock options.
Your solution is to let AT&T and Comcast double and triple charge anyone and everyone who connects through their network? GTFO with these Randian clown shoes.
Not the AC. But of course the government created the internet. To argue otherwise because it has grown since the 80's and 90's is to argue that GM didn't create the first commercial electric car because a Tesla has greater power, range, and 3G.
You don't have a point, you have a Randian axe to grind. And that makes you a moron.
Probably an SF Bay Area transplant -- to them anyone not fervently clamoring for a Authoritarian Government to telling everyone what to eat, drink and how to generally live their lives is conservative. I hate the Bay Area and regret moving here -- leaving by this Summer I hope.
You mean choosing to continue most of the Bush Tax Cuts while arguing for years that the corporate tax rate - already at very low levels after deductions - should be cut some more? Randians should move to an island with the Obots and fight it out over who's revisionist history is more delusional.
Right. If private enterprise had been in charge of the space program, we might have sent a man to the moon by now.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Now I'm confused. If baseball hadn't been invented, how would Hank Aaron have hit home runs again?
Maybe we need to work on your similes.
You are welcome on my lawn.
A government's role should be: (pick one)
1. Break up monopolies, reduce barriers to market entry, and encourage competition, or
2. Regulate the behavior of monopolies.
Net Neutrality attempts to do #2.
3. All of the above.
Natural monopolies should be regulated. This includes utilities (power, water, telephone) that rely on physical infrastructure. The owner of the infrastructure (the cables, the pipes), should be strictly regulated - and where possible being forced to allow competitors on their infrastructure. Ideally, owners of infrastructure and service providers using that infrastructure are separate.
The most obvious and easy to understand example is roads. The government builds roads and bridges, and everyone can use those roads and bridges - either for free, or against a fixed cost which is the same for everyone. Every driver pays the same toll to cross a bridge, based only on things like size/weight/type of the vehicle and maybe the time of the day, regardless of which company he works for. It's the same for everyone, roads are neutral.
In Europe, this has gone so far as to decouple rail roads from rail transport providers, power lines from power suppliers, telephone lines from telephone/ADSL Internet suppliers, etc. I'll be the first to admit that it doesn't always go smooth and there are issues, but the idea is the correct one. It's just really hard to execute well. Net neutrality is also an issue there, though generally the governments are highly in favour of net neutrality, and in the end we'll have full separation between providers of physical infrastructure (the cables in the ground), network service providers (the ISPs providing connectivity), and content providers (the individual web sites).
That'd be the ideal situation.
Low barrier of entry to the content market (everyone can set up a web site and be sure that all their potential customers can actually reach that site on equal footing with all other sites) which of course enhances competition. Low barrier of entry to the service provider market, as everyone can rent the required connectivity for a fixed, known price.
Physical infrastructure is a natural monopoly, very high barrier of entry, and therefore has to be highly regulated. This is something that I consider a prime government task, be it done directly, through a SOE, by appointing a commercial entity to do it, or even by forcing a commercial entity to open up their existing networks to the competition.
The 2015 personal income maximum California tax rate is 13.30% for an individual making more then $1,000,000 or a couple making more then $1,039,374.
The 2015 California corporate tax rate is a flat 8.84%.
So are you a degenerate liar or just dumber then a box of rocks? The truth took a mindless Google search and about 20 seconds. Are you incapable of that level effort or do you expect that everyone one else is as uninformed as you are and will believe whatever drivel you post?
So go back to where you live in your mother's basement and look for the radioactive CIA mind control scorpions and leave the rest of us surface dwellers alone.
Why is Snark Required?
Calm down and cool it with the name calling. He is neither. He is not even mistaken. You add the top CA rate of 13.3% to the top Federal rate of 39.6% - a CA resident has to pay them both, you know - and, duh, the total is over 50%.
I'm with you brother. I was a Republican until the core Republican party went batsh*t crazy. Seems like a good idea in theory smaller government, sane spending until you start digging and find out it's all agenda driven BS.
Healthcare should be one of those things that we can agree that should be universal because it is actually the cheapest option available. Look at Switzerland probably one of the most conservative business oriented countries on the planet, they enacted universal healthcare because it was a much cheaper option than the one they had at the time, basically the Healthcare system we had before Obama care.
The problem there is Comcast double dipping. Their users have already paid for best effort bandwidth. If Comcast has their hand out to Netflix (who is not currently their customer), then necessarily Comcast hasn't given their own customers best effort (if they can't do better, what is Netflix paying for?)
The worst abuses happen when the ISP itself provides content (for example video on demand) and takes steps to make other offers less attractive by deliberately providing them a poorer quality of service then their own VOD servers get.
Lets say you own a turnpike. Someone opens a gas station just off the turnpike. Fine and dandy. But you see that they make good money so you build your own gas station on the next exit. But the profits could be better so suddenly the off ramp next to the other guy's station is perpetually 'closed for repairs' yet the repairs never seem to happen. But pumping gas is a lot like work, so you offer the other guy a 'deal' For 10% of his profits, you will 'expidite' the 'repairs' and make sure they aren't 'necessary' again.
It's just one step up from organized crime offering 'insurance' to local businesses, because "you know, stuff happens, buildings burn down..."
Network neutrality is the people saying "that's pretty bad behavior for someone who wouldn't even be in business if not for that sweet public grant of right of way. Show some gratitude and cut it out!".
Only now that they are Obama's, the Rs employ doublethink (now that's irony) to say they're bad. Kinda like Romneycare was a great idea until Obama implemented it.
why is it so hard to accept or comprehend that things build on each other?
the full statement should be "you didn't build that all by yourself, you had help", and it's absolutely true in modern society.
all of our various constructs help and reinforce other constructs.
Gizmo Wonderbrain creates the practical flying car.
-Gizmos car factory is dependent on shipments from suppliers around the country.
--those shipments can be shipped quickly and easily because we have a national highway system
---that highway system is safe and reliable because we have rules and safety requirements
-gizmos factory is also dependent on skilled workers
--workers who are attracted to his company by good wages
---wages paid in currency usable around the world because it's backed by the full faith and credit of the government, rather than just in Gizmos Company Town
-Gizmo himself is a genius
--a genius whose intellect was brought out by his teachers in his schools as he grew up, reinforcing and challenging him
---teachers who taught in public schools because as a society we value education for the benefits it provides society
--a genius who went to college to learn engineering
---with the help of Pell Grants and a GI Bill
----paid for by a portion of everyone's taxes
Really we can go on and on. But the point is this: No one is born without help, raised without help, educated without help, creates a company without help, and all the surrounding and enabling infrastructure. Everything is dependent on everything else. Everything is built on a foundation that consists of everything that came before it. From the computer at your desk, to the clothes on your back, from the education you receives, to the gum in your pocket.
Look around you: the reason we don't exist in a Dickens novel where basic existence is an uncertainty, life is short and miserable for the overwhelming majority, is because we as a society pulled together and have created a slew of enabling infrastructure. The mechanisms vary, some are through government, others through private enterprise, but all in all, the end result is the same: No, you bloody well did NOT build "that" all by yourself and without any help from the surrounding society.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
> I was a Republican until the core Republican party went batsh*t crazy.
One down... only all the rest to go...
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
the same way it mucked up:
-railroads linking the country
-the interstate that provided the backbone for industry, so that suppliers no longer had to be next door to factories (which creates a dynamic where every town is its own industrial enclave), but could supply the entire nation
-the telephone network allowing instantaneous real time voice communication across the country, where before moving from coast to coast typically meant leaving all your family and friends behind essentially forever, other than a couple letters a year
-creating a currency that fuels and backs our economy
-creating the rules and regulations that permit businesses to operate in a predictable and profitable manner, along with legal protections for everyone and everything involved (company, employer, employee, consumer, copyright, trademarks, business practices)
-safe food that doesn't require finding out a supplier is bad by having people die first
-safe cars that don't require finding out a supplier is bad by having people die first
-safe homes and buildings (the building code) that doesn't require finding out a construction company is bad by having people die first
-safe (lots of things) that don't require having people die first
-a military that ensures the nation is secure from outside threats, rather than having every city state or town see to its own defense, or worse have it provided by rival companies ala The Syndicate (also acts as a unifying force, otherwise cities/states essentially act as their own nation states)
-public health, particularly including vaccinations
The list goes on.
But the point is this: to say government always mucks it up is ignorant. No, government isn't perfect. But in our nation, and other free nations like us, if its not perfect we are able to fix it, and more importantly, fix it without resorting to violence and revolution, which is good for stability and long term growth as a society. And it's because we follow the political theory of a government "by the People, for the People, and of the People". Our government is US, we are the government, represented in the abstract by the representatives we send to D.C. And because of that, our government is more successful than not, and more adequately addresses problems that we as society see than other governmental systems that have come before. Our government is not some abstract Other, separate from us, and unaccountable to us, regardless of the hyperbole you may be told by people and groups who WANT YOU to think that you are powerless. They want you to think that government is a failure, that it is out of control....so that they can control it more than you.
Ask yourself, why do people fight so hard to get into office in an entity that they not only claim is not only a failure, but also evil, and the source of all problems?
And further, why do they try so hard to MAKE it fail, to make their claims come true?
The answer is because it's a sham. They want you to think those things, so that you stop caring, or stop trying, and cede control to them.
--
If you ever spend time in the military, you find lots of seemingly braindead warnings and procedures. Things like "caution jet blast", caution tape around bulkheads, particulary the top and bottom, signs near ladders saying "watch step", or "hold handrails". You may think these things are dumb, but going through training you will learn, each of these warning exist because someone, somewhere didn't pay attention, got hurt, screwed up, or hurt others. Someone fell down that ladderwell; someone got sucked into a jet engine; someone cracked his head open going through a hatch, someone knocked someone overboard.
Government action is very similar: Government and a lot of the functions it has taken on, or regulations it has made, like say in areas of food and car safety, or manufacturing pollution, exist specifically because someone, somewhere, took advantage of society before those rules exist. Companies know how m
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
The car couldn't operate without the wheel that came before it.
So yes, the wheel absolutely gets some credit.
No, he doesn't get all of it.
But he does get credit for creating the foundation that enabled further development and invention. That's all the President's statement meant, though folks try to take it out of context, oversimplify it, and ignore the rather obvious meaning behind it.
It's quite simple: no one exists in a vacuum. Everyone in our society has had help from the rest of society, and we shouldn't ignore that interdependence.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Well first off, they aren't fixing it.
They are simply preserving the status quo as a bit of a pre-emptive strike before companies like Comcast can break it.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
No one had even heard of the internet until the government relinquished control over it, and no one in the government foresaw what it would become.
But yes, we should trust the government to have greater control, and credit the government for doing this wonderful thing, because without it, there's no way anyone would've thought to link one network to another...