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Tim Wu: Why the Courts Will Have to Save Net Neutrality (nytimes.com)
Tim Wu, a law professor at Columbia who first coined the term "net neutrality," writes for the New York Times: Allowing such censorship is anathema to the internet's (and America's) founding spirit. And by going this far, the F.C.C. may also have overplayed its legal hand. So drastic is the reversal of policy (if, as expected, the commission approves Mr. Pai's proposal next month), and so weak is the evidence to support the change, that it seems destined to be struck down in court. The problem for Mr. Pai is that government agencies are not free to abruptly reverse longstanding rules on which many have relied without a good reason (Editor's note: the link could be paywalled), such as a change in factual circumstances. A mere change in F.C.C. ideology isn't enough. As the Supreme Court has said, a federal agency must "examine the relevant data and articulate a satisfactory explanation for its action." Given that net neutrality rules have been a huge success by most measures, the justification for killing them would have to be very strong. It isn't. In fact, it's very weak. From what we know so far, Mr. Pai's rationale for eliminating the rules is that cable and phone companies, despite years of healthy profit, need to earn even more money than they already do -- that is, that the current rates of return do not yield adequate investment incentives. More specifically, Mr. Pai claims that industry investments have gone down since 2015, the year the Obama administration last strengthened the net neutrality rules.
Let the ants decide!
For one : 2015 is not "Long standing rules". If anything, the "Long standing rules" apply more to the 1996 Telecommunications Act which labeled ISPs as Information Service Providers.
For two : Courts making laws and forcing regulatory bodies to enforce them is a path you don't want to go down. If a sitting judge can just decide whatever he wants, and make up new law and regulations on the spot, then they effectively become Legislative, Executive and Judicial all in one.
"Not to mention all the idiots who use words like boxen."
Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04, @06:49PM
From what we know so far, Mr. Pai's rationale for eliminating the rules is that cable and phone companies, despite years of healthy profit, need to earn even more money than they already do -- that is, that the current rates of return do not yield adequate investment incentives.
CEOs of various telecoms have been asked during quarterly earnings calls how the implementation of net neutrality and later its repeal would affect their bottom line. They have said it would not. They are legally required to provide accurate information during such calls (and can be sued for breach of fiduciary duty if they don't).
Such statements will be used against Pai when the FCC gets sued over this.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
Over on Twitter, a frequently promoted Tweet is Comcast claiming that they're not going to block/throttle anything.
That and a buck fifty will get you a bad cup of coffee.
And they're specifically not saying anything about refusing to raise rates.
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
I can only hope that there will be a sudden outbreak of common sense and that the courts will uphold net neutrality. ISPs should really only be access providers whom can optionally offer their own competing content services without harming competition by charging extra for access to, and throttling, the competition. Big Telecom has complained about the expense of building out their networks and maintaining them. Really, these networks have been subsidized by government granting them duopolies, or in some cases, monopolies. And in other cases, municipalities have offered tax breaks to Big Telecom for building out high speed data, which in effect, is a tax payer subsidy.
I do not want a return to the days of AOL, Prodigy, and CompuServe. Those days were truly walled gardens. You could not send email outside of those services. Bulletin boards were open only to subscribers and there was no sharing of content amongst the online services. If you wanted information on both a CompuServe and an AOL forum, you'd need subscriptions on both services. Then, as if to add insult to injury, you were sometimes charged exorbitant per minute usage fees on top of the monthly fee. Perhaps, the only more generous of services was Prodigy. At least with Prodigy, it was just about an all you can eat.
in addition, the gop controlled Congress, which refused to seat hundreds of judges under Obama is packing the courts with incompetent republican partisans, so the activism from the bench will be decidedly pro-business
I'm not even a US citizen and I feel like I should refute point two. The Supreme Court would be the one which handles this case, which isn't just one judge, instead it has 9 sitting judges who will all get to decide on the case. These are some of the most tenured judges around, and have some of the highest authority in the country. Further, they are not making a new law. Instead, they look at what changes are being suggested and determine if the change is legal or not. The laws are already there, they're just checking what laws apply in such a complicated case.
When regulatory bodies completely ignore the will of the public you have a much bigger problem. Courts seem like the perfect entity to deal with that, though it should be a treason case.
You clearly aren't a U.S. citizen... that is true.
Second of all, pretending that the Supreme Court should be granted the power of a defacto dictatorship based on a badly thrown together appeal-to-authority logical fallacy shows why the rest of the world should be butting out of U.S. politics since apparently you've never heard of this thing called "checks and balances".
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
Founding spirit of America etc come into play only when Democrats are in power. When Republicans are in power, some vague explanation of why it could be legal is enough.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
When regulatory bodies completely ignore the will of the public you have a much bigger problem. Courts seem like the perfect entity to deal with that, though it should be a treason case.
The will of the public is enforced through the ballot box. In this case, it was clear the Trump agenda was deregulation. It was a theme of his campaign that Government is too big and needs to be trimmed down.
He even addressed SPECIFICALLY the 2015 Act prior to its passing :
https://twitter.com/realdonald...
And he was elected. You can't argue "Will of the people" in this case.
"Not to mention all the idiots who use words like boxen."
Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04, @06:49PM
I just watched a bunch of Republicans c*rcle j*rking on YouTube about how they were now facing an unprecedented pool of unfilled positions in the judicial system that can now be filled with 'right thinking people' thanks to McConnell's obstructionist tactics during the Obama presidency. The number of slots they have to fill must be huge since the Federalist Society, to whom Trump has outsourced these appointments, is having such trouble finding qualified candidates that they are elevating people to the bench who have never even tried a case. The incompetence of some of these appointees is staggering. Basically some of the biggest crooks in the USA are reshaping the US justice system for the next 40 years so I would not get my hopes up if I was Professor Wu about these people doing squat about net neutrality.
Right... I'm sure a law professor at Columbia has no idea about how laws and judges work, and that you certainly must know more about it because you are an official Denizen Of The Internet.
So let me get this straight:
Oh, brave new world!
See subject: "Every time a new law passes that seems to affect a bigger & BIGGER body of people ask yourself WHO GAINS FROM IT THE MOST in terms of monetary or personal gain..."
* That's the question EVERYONE should be asking themselves on this imo.
So, thus, I HAVE A QUESTION: What are the gains vs. losses doing this FOR END-USER CONSUMERS of the internet & yes WHO GAINS POWER OVER THE NET THEN the most from the corporate OR gov't side?
(TIA for the answer(s) here)
APK
P.S.=> I've seen arguments in favor of making ISP's "Common-Carriers" (then what gov't. body has most power over the internet then & WHO do they tend to favor in corporate america?) which iirc, & I am NOT the 'best person for this' (hence why I'm posting this - I need to know more), treats the modern internet the way dialup telephones were... apk
The FCC is going to have no shortage of examples of censorship and flaming hypocrisy from the most vocal advocates of Net Neutrality like Google, Facebook and Twitter. If the goal is an "open Internet," it's going to be the biggest backers who end up looking the worst because they are doing all of the things that they fear the ISPs would do (and yet have never done).
Big Tech crushes dissenting opinions, even slightly dissenting opinions. People get banned, shadowbanned, demonetized, etc. at the drop of a hat. By comparison, even Comcast looks downright honorable in how it treats its users.
Leftists on slashdot love to say "no one has a right to give you a platform." It's just terrifying to think that someone else might have the power to deplatform you instead of those who are amenable to your point of view on issues like this.
It's amazing what winning all three branches of government can get you. Hopefully the Democrats learn from this, but so far they haven't.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
In this instance, the Supreme Court is acting as the checks and balances to the changes being made by the FCC. It's not like the Supreme Court are the ones suggesting that the law should be that the internet is free for all. Far from it. Instead, if the FCC go ahead with Pai's plans, someone will file a complaint with the Supreme Court. If there is enough evidence to show that the FCCs changes break the laws of the US, they will be ruled illegal. The SC simply aren't going to decide that they don't like the FCC and send a decree from upon high that everything must be reverted. This isn't how courts work.
The leading contributor of lobbying efforts to Congress is the healthcare industry. Number 2 is Telecom and there may be concerted effort on their part to be #1.
Regulatory bodies don't answer to the will of the people. They answer to the legislative branch (or in some cases the executive branch). If regulatory bodies answered to the will of the people, weed would be legal federally and so would firearm suppressors. This is the problem with granting regulatory bodies the ability to make and change their own regulations. They are completely unaccountable to the people until the people convince the legislature to change the regulatory body's powers. My one hope for all of this is it will teach us as a country to stop trying to do end runs around our legislative processes.
I love all this winning. Can't get enough. Only people complaining about net neutrality are the Hillary supporters.
The Democrats just seem to be looking back. Books about why Hillary failed. They also are only talking about Hillary for 2020, which will pretty much ensure another Trump win. They need to stop that. Focus on getting a candidate that isn't "damaged goods", that doesn't strike abject dislike in Dem supporters, and abject loathing in everyone else. Focus on someone with an actual constructive platform other than "We will hit Republicans where it hurts." This isn't World of Warcraft, folks.
Oh, and stop letting a few people with their own interests lead the party. Otherwise, expect to be swept out of Congress completely.
Well, you know those tree-hugging liberal hippies. They still believe in this lovey-dovey "for the people" bullshit.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
If there is enough evidence to show that the FCCs changes break the laws of the US, they will be ruled illegal
How was it not illegal before 2015 but suddenly illegal now?
"The problem for Mr. Pai is that government agencies are not free to abruptly reverse longstanding rules on which many have relied without a good reason"
Well no, he gets this exactly backwards. Network Neutrality was EXACTLY such a reversal, and here's Pai simply undoing what the FCC wasn't free to do in the first place. Pai is correcting the very transgression Wu is citing here.
It was previously a longstanding rule--supported by law--that the FCC would have a hands off approach to the internet. Wheeler reversed that policy drastically. Pai is saying the FCC can't make such reversals.
Anyway, in the end Wu is complaining that he's not getting his own way. It's akin to throwing a tantrum when he's just not managed to convince lawmakers that his perspective is the right one.
Why Hillary failed? You need a BOOK for that? For real?
The US population is used to their presidential elections to be a dog-and-pony show. This time it was worse. It was a bitch-and-jackass show. BOTH of them were unfit for the office and both of them also knew what we all knew: We can't simply say "no, fuck you". One of them WILL be president.
The main reason Hillary failed is that for most people it doesn't matter whether a bitch or a jackass is president, they want neither.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Not that any previous administration packed the courts with partisans, competent or not.
You actually may not want competent partisans packed onto the courts, though it's hard to tell what's worse, partisan judges or incompetent judges. Not a big deal however, as the results are often the same. So is the fix.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Checks is what I write to politicians when I need a law, and balance is what I care about in my bank account.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Argument from authority logical fallacy
... a basis for decreeing Net Neutrality in the first place?
Networks have prioritized certain types of high-value traffic ever since someone figured out that their network was saturated with someone else's data, and that you could program a way to control that.
NN isn't a "long standing expectation", but a relatively new idea. If the basis for fighting the "abruptly reverse longstanding rules on which many have relied without a good reason", the reasons behind the "longstanding rules" need to be proven to be "good" first, then we can argue about these two-year-old rules being "longstanding".
I'm not saying that they will find it illegal. I'm just offering up a simplified version of the process any court case against the FCC will go through. The Supreme Court simply won't be handing down their judgement from upon high without any form of scrutiny.
What's that got to do with anything?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Courts making laws and forcing regulatory bodies to enforce them is a path you don't want to go down.
Sigh... Courts make laws constantly in the form of case law. That is normal and proper. It is their job to make regulatory bodies adhere to the law when they overstep their authority. That is exactly the point of the judiciary. They are there to determine what the interpretation of the law should be in the event of an ambiguity or conflict. A judiciary that does not have the authority to create binding judgments and to correct regulatory bodies is worse than useless.
If a sitting judge can just decide whatever he wants, and make up new law and regulations on the spot, then they effectively become Legislative, Executive and Judicial all in one.
If a judge oversteps their authority that is why we have an appeal system and a supreme court. In the event they cannot handle it that's why we have Congress and an executive branch to provide a counterbalance. Sometimes judges get it wrong just like sometime congress passes laws that are wrong. That's ok as long as we have a mechanism to right the wrong.
Law professors are not immune to having opinions swayed by their personal preferences and desires. In fact, the lawyer's profession requires the ability to form arguments supporting either side of a case in question. We cannot pretend that his statement is purely objective.
technical whipping boy, Occam's Strop (think about it...)
Net neutrality is being revoked in the same manner it was implemented: by regulatory fiat. If the revocation is improper, it's very existence was improper in the first place.
Wu's argument is the argument of a child: "I don't like what you're doing now so it's wrong! But the same type of act was OK when I liked the results!"
Try to guess the number I'm thinking of.....
It's the number of people who voted for Trump based on his Net Neutrality stance.
It is also the number of people who voted against Trump based on his Net Neutrality stance.
Can you guess this magic number? I'll give you a hint-- It's between ZERO and ZERO.
Say what you want about whether NN is being "destroyed", or if it never existed in the first place... but don't fabricate a public mandate when 99.9999% of people who give a fuck disagree with what is happening.
"Prediction: within 10 years, Windows will be a Linux distribution." Me, 7-6-2016
The main reason Hillary failed is that for most people it doesn't matter whether a bitch or a jackass is president, they want neither.
Where 'bitch' in this case supposedly means a person lacking a certain body part, and in possession of a pair of other body parts that the other candidate doesn't have.
Sadly, there seems quite a lot of truth in this statement, so it is more accurate to say that for many voters the presidential elections should be a 'cur-and-pony' show.
Tom Wheeler ,the former head of the FCC, dismantled Ajit Pai's arguments for net-neutrality.
You're a moron. No wonder you can't admit Trump's going to prison until he dies there. Popcorn.
What is "anathema to America's founding spirit" is giving a federal agency control over what private publishers can and cannot say. That is what FCC net neutrality regulations do.
Comcast charging more for Netflix, on the other hand, isn't "censorship". It is "anathema to America's founding spirit" for the federal government to force printers to print content that they don't want to print.
Wu got it backwards: the legal case for net neutrality regulation is exceptionally weak, as is the evidence that it is needed in the first place; and the whole thing was regulatory overreach. This challenges to the reversal will go down in flames in court, unless they find some progressive activist judge.
Well no, he gets this exactly backwards. Network Neutrality was EXACTLY such a reversal, and here's Pai simply undoing what the FCC wasn't free to do in the first place. Pai is correcting the very transgression Wu is citing here.
If there is any disagreement as to whether the FCC has that authority it is the responsibility of the judiciary and/or congress to clarify the matter. I disagree that the FCC doesn't/shouldn't have the authority to enforce net neutrality but if there is disagreement on that point then the courts are a perfectly reasonable place to address the matter. To be frank with the current Congress and administration the judiciary is probably the only place to fight what Mr Pai is trying to do.
It was previously a longstanding rule--supported by law--that the FCC would have a hands off approach to the internet.
A hands off approach isn't an option. You either support the content makers or your support the ISPs and there are consequences either way. Elimination of net neutrality rules de-facto is favoring the interests of certain parties over others. There is no middle ground here and someone has to play referee. If not the FCC then someone else but I would argue that net neutrality is a vital policy that needs to be enforced. I think Ajit Pai's arguments against net neutrality are specious at best and corrupt at worst.
Pai is saying the FCC can't make such reversals.
Why not listen to what he actually said? Pai is CLEARLY in the pocket of those who favor elimination of net neutrality and has a long track record of favoring the interests of broadcasters over other parties. This is neither new nor a secret. His arguments are ridiculous and specious and transparently one sided.
He promised it in his campaign and is now delivering on his promises. He was voted into office. I know you're not used to Politicians keeping their campaign promises, but this is what is happening now, and yes, he wasn't voted into office based only on his stance on Net Neutrality, but the fact remains : He is the sitting President of the United States and he is fulfilling his campaign promises.
"Not to mention all the idiots who use words like boxen."
Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04, @06:49PM
If you could be bothered to read the article, it explains that the long standing rules are from 2005:
Back in 2005, a small phone company based in North Carolina named Madison River began preventing its subscribers from making phone calls using the internet application Vonage. As Vonage was a competitor in the phone call market, Madison River’s action was obviously anticompetitive. Consumers complained, and the Federal Communications Commission, under Michael Powell, its Republican-appointed chairman, promptly fined the company and forced it to stop blocking Vonage.
That was the moment when “net neutrality” rules went from a mere academic proposal to a part of the United States legal order. On that foundation — an open internet, with no blocking — much of our current internet ecosystem was built.
Just another day in Paradise
The problem for Mr. Pai is that government agencies are not free to abruptly reverse longstanding rules on which many have relied without a good reason
The Net Neutrality regulations Chairman Pai proposes rolling back are only 2 years old...
Ken
This is another reason she lost. People like you tried to make this a sexism thing. It wasn't. It was that she was unlikable and stunk of corruption. All I could think about when seeing her was "man, the teflon don could have taken lessons from her". Seriously, how did she never land in prison?
You can claim it was sexism, just like with obama you claimed it was racism, but failure to see the actual reasons just dooms you. You have to stop throwing around "isms" to demonize people you disagree with. It will backfire, as it did in 2016.
You were correct right up until you used the word treason, where you clearly lack knowledge of the meaning of the word.
Our tax dollars should not be squandered on protecting congresswhores.
Let the Free Market choose who lives and who dies!
What was in place before 2015 was not what is being put in place next month. By 'undoing' what was done during the Obama administration they are 'undoing' the way things have basically always worked. But since they are undoing something done by Obama's administration, it has to be good, right?
Most people in favor of repealing net neutrality have no idea of what net neutrality is. Of course, there are also the very few who will benefit greatly from it financially at the expense of everyone else. They do definitely understand it and are in favor of it. And now one of then holds the reins.
overtime citizens came to look at the internet as common carrier of public information/data/communications, not Information Service Providers.
today people rely on the Internet in the same fashion as schools, bridges, roads, and the courts. this means we need access to be more reliable than "whatever the retarded mega corp wants to provide."
https://www.trumpsweapon.com/
I think the democrats over-demonstrated the importance of the judicial branch by using it to block so much of what Trump was trying to do.
Comcast, AT&T, Verizon and the National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA) have spent $572 million on attempts to influence the FCC and other government agencies since 2008.
https://medium.com/theyoungtur...
https://represent.us/action/ho...
https://www.theverge.com/2017/...
Just another day in Paradise
And apparently you've never heard of this thing called "Marbury v. Madison"
You are welcome on my lawn.
Just not the people that elected the Republicans. It's OK, the Republicans are just as bad when the Democrats win.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
The issue wasn't what is or is not between her legs, it was her past - she has three plus decades of scandals and accusations weighing her down, and her actual accomplishments are few and far between (did she ever author legislation as a Senator? Did she 'reset' relations with Russia? Did she defend women's rights in middle-eastern countries? Did she consciously decide to NEVER use a secure gov't email server while Secretary of State? Etc.)...
The fundamental problem with Hillary, is her history. She had to 'launch' her campaign twice, since no one cared the first time - remember her drive across America ina sprinter van, where she NEVER interacted with anyone along the way? She worked the system to secure her party's nomination, but relied on a new campaign strategy to try and Win the general election - and that strategy had her ignore half of the famous 'blue wall' states during the general election, States she would go on to lose by a few thousand votes each, and cost her the election.
Democrats got luck in 2008 with their 'novelty' candidate, the first black candidate from a major party, but he had the advantage of being a relative unknown, compared to HRC with her decades of baggage - the novelty of the first female candidate from a major political party wasn't enough to overcome her legacy.
Ken
Dear comrade RedK. You don't sound like native english speaker. Please kys.
He is doing exactly as promised your number of 99.9999% is way off base. Everyone that voted for Trump is behind this. Get rid of the government bloat and get them out of micromanaging business. Let the free enterprise system work.
How you can say that Trump's tweet addresses anything "SPECIFICALLY"
is beyond me. It is factually inaccurate and displays no indication that Trump understands any part of what he's tweeting about.
It was the will of 3 million fewer people than his opponent. You can say Trump is legitimately the president, but you cannot say that he represents the "will of the people", nor that he has any sort of popular mandate.
You are welcome on my lawn.
For what crime? Please, be specific, and don't waste our time with unproven allegations and accusations...
How much will Democrats force the federal government spend to investigate the Steele dossier, which they themselves funded the creation of and never bothered to corroborate or vett any claims within it before 'leaking' it to the press?
Ken
.
Drain the swamp? Yea, right. I didn't realize my bank account was considered a swamp.
also think about what an Information Service Provider is. it's actually defined as an enhanced service provider in the law. back in the day it was a phone number you called into like a 900 line. it was a service someone provided to the public back then. 900-dial-hor got you a chick to sex with. if you called 555-AOL-HELL you connected into AOL, and the internet. all of this was done over the telecommunications network (however, by dialing into AOL, you actually were accessing another common carrier network known as the Internet).
now you no longer call up a number to gain access to those "Information Service Providers."
instead the internet exists by itself purely, as a separate network as it did from the start, a telecommunication system we all use to connect separate from telephone system. we use it more than telephones. it's become the definition of "common carrier" of all our personal communications, data, and information. there's no other common carrier anymore. it's just the internet. telephone is still around but not nearly as big anymore or as relevant because we send our voice communications over the internet instead. voice is in fact being transmitted over the internet, ie VoLTE and VoIP.
see. it never was a Information Service Provider. It always was a common carrier, but previously accessible like an ISP by use of a dial up number over the telephone network. it was always vastly superior to an enhancement of the telephone system of course, it was always an entire network to itself, a common carrier connectable to by a common carrier.
here's what a telecom service is: the offering of a pure transmission capability over a communications path that is virtually transparent in terms of its interaction with customer supplied information.
seems to describe the internet doesn't it?
here's what an enhanced service is: For the purpose of this subpart, the term 'enhanced service' shall refer to services, offered over common carrier transmission facilities used in interstate communications, which employ computer processing applications that act on the format, content, protocol or similar aspects of the subscriber's transmitted information; provide the subscriber additional, different, or restructured information; or involve subscriber interaction with stored information.
that seems to describe Facebook, Twitter, 900 line sex service, etc.
yeppers the internet was always in actuality a common carrier, however when accessed over the telephone lines back in the day using dial up modems, seemed a little enhanced servicey. however this classification was likely done because the republicans were in power, and their desire to misclassify the internet, in order to reduce regulations, make more money and profits, and reduce the rights of citizens who used it..
https://www.trumpsweapon.com/
Ahh, a retreat to identity politics. This is what I meant when I said Democrats still haven't learned. I don' t suspect I'll get anywhere, but I'll try anyway... if you find yourself in a minority group and your goal is to have someone who represents you in office, you need to create a coalition with an inclusive message. This should be a very natural way for liberals to operate, and historically Democrats did very well with it. Or, you can chase short-term advantage with a message of fear and division - something Republicans have historically done well with... though at the expense of long-term membership decline as demographics and sentiment shift.
Democrats have recently latched on to this poisonous Republican strategy, and it is killing them. I can think of no worse tactical mistake then getting everyone to circle their wagons and vote with their "tribe". White people currently vote all over the map because they aren't a single identity. If you force an identity on them, they will be the largest single ethnic group long into the foreseeable future. This is a bad strategy, and it's bad for society. The end-goal is (or at least, should be IMHO) a society where everyone enjoys equal treatment, both by government and by society. Stratifying us into tribes will not accomplish this, and will only cement "white privilege" (another terrible term for converting people to your side).
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
The implication of what you're saying is that you think that "pro-business judicial activism" is "incompetent", while "anti-business judicial activism" is competent.
That sort of b.s. is why Democrats lost in the last election. Face it, Americans want a more pro-business (i.e., pro-free market) government because they understand that that's what we need for growth and prosperity.
Oh, I see - 12 years is "longstanding"?
I'm pretty sure, once you strip out emotions from the argument, that what Chatman Pai is proposing is to roll back over-reaching regulations the FCC imposed on the industry since 2005. There is a huge difference between regulations regarding blocking a competitor 100% and allowing one customer to pay for faster service, which has no net effect on others that choose not to pay for faster service EXCEPT to make them slower only by comparison to those that paid for faster service. (It's like arguing that first class mail got slower when the post office started offering priority mail service.)
Ken
Politicians actually usually do keep their campaign promises.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
It's not the job of regulatory agencies to give the public whatever the public wants. It's the job of regulatory agencies to follow the law and the Constitution.
With all due respect, are you sure you've not had some of that Trump kool-aid? He's flip-flopped on even his promises more than a Northern Pike that just got reeled in. You cannot put much credence to what he promises any more than you could trust him if he said "the check is in the mail, trust me!"
What's that got to do with anything?
What? Is there a new requirement that /. comments need to be relevant to the topic at hand?
Ken
ow you can say that Trump's tweet addresses anything "SPECIFICALLY"
He's not talking about the vague concept of "regulations" in a general sense, he's talking directly about the Net Neutrality policies that are about to pass (when the tweet was written in 2014). So regardless of whether you think he got the finer details right or wrong doesn't change the fact that he's addressing the subject specifically.
You don't seem to understand the meaning of the word "specifically"...
"Not to mention all the idiots who use words like boxen."
Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04, @06:49PM
By 'undoing' what was done during the Obama administration they are 'undoing' the way things have basically always worked.
OK. Too bad Obama fast tracked congress so many times and didn't get actual laws passed. He mad it pretty easy for his legacy to be unraveled.
Most people in favor of repealing net neutrality have no idea of what net neutrality is.
Same goes for most people that are for it. Of course the people in the industry understand it so your next statement is pretty redundant.
When regulatory bodies completely ignore the will of the public you have a much bigger problem. Courts seem like the perfect entity to deal with that, though it should be a treason case.
The will of the public is instantiated in an election. If the people don't like what the elected officials do, they change them at the next election.
One doesn't throw a coup against democracy because it hasn't turned out the way you imagined. There's nothing he can do that can't be waved away in the future (unless 18 months counts as long-term precedence, as OP claims, in which case 30 months under Trump will be even worse.)
The real problem is the supine, ballless Congress of both sides who prefer to do nothing for fear of anything being held against them. So we get crap like a regulatory agency stretching the original legislative mandate out of all proportion...to satisfy the goals of the legislators, who are too scared to pass laws directly.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
I have seen a lot of demonization of Hilary Clinton. Decades worth of it. Bengaaaaazzzzziii!! Butheremails!!!! Nothing significant ever stuck, but yes, this demonization produced the stink of corruption. It is very disappointing.
What amazes me is that almost issue-by-issue there were similar allegations against Donald Trump, and in his case there is a lot of substance, but somehow it doesn't seem to matter. Just take the supposed corruption with the charity foundation of the Clintons. A lot of mud has been thrown, but nothing substantial was ever proved. Whereas Donald Trump's charity foundation was used to pay off a prosecution and buy a portrait of Donald Trump; this is fairly well documented.
Similar for that stupid pizzagate versus DJT harrasment of lots of women; the uranium nonsense versus foreign diplomats staying in Trump hotels to please the president; Trump's 'original' way to handle state secrets; and there is Trump's past history as a shady business man, and I haven't even used the word Russia or Twitter yet...
Given all that, I try to understand why so many people still go for Trump, and all those 'isms' seem to be the most plausible explanation. And despite all evidence I still hope that enough people now realise what a danger to the country (and indeed the world) the current president is, and that THAT will backfire on him.
Utilities are not where "Free Enterprise" runs strong. In fact, if it was the case, then we'd never have been able to build an electrical grid that gets just about anywhere in this country, because much of the country wouldn't be low-enough hanging fruit for profit for "Free Enterprising" companies. It's exactly because we still treat dial-tone differently than a data link yet the physical link is ultimately a part of the same network.
The surveillance state also has a strong dependency upon net neutrality. Everyone's traffic all runs on the same network, and it all passes through the backbone links, where it is easily monitored and captured. If access to everything on the Internet can be obtained by just a simple connection to an ISP, that pretty much guarantees the Internet will carry just about all of the traffic.
Were the ISPs to attempt to raise revenue by breaking the Internet and selling it as though the various websites were really distinct services which the ISP was buying and re-selling, it would make it much more appealing alternative for individual efforts to route around the blockage and hindrance by running a much more free "off-grid" network (an idea which there ought to be serious discussion about).
Checks and balances you know.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
The understanding of what Net Neutrality is is not strong with this one...
By a wide margin. He won because our system of government was set up to give wealthy rural landowners a disproportionate amount of voting power. So yeah, I can argue will o the people because America isn't really a Democracy, we just play one on TV.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
That's pretty much always the case in politics: concentrated benefits versus diffuse costs. It certainly applies here: net neutrality provides concentrated benefits and imposes diffuse costs, which is why you have such vocal net neutrality proponents and hear little from the other side.
We elect representatives that represent us on a variety of issues. In the last election, we elected a pussy grabbing businessman over a faux-progressive career politician. That tells you the tradeoffs people generally prefer, namely less regulation and lower taxes as opposed to more social justice and progressivism. Repealing net neutrality is consistent with that choice.
The APA requires that agencies go through a process of fact-finding and notice-and-comment periods. It doesn't require that their reasoning is correct or that they follow the public sentiment or the democratic majority. It does require an explanation of the logic behind it, but the court is supposed see that an explanation based on facts is there, not evaluate it for logical or empirical soundness.
You might wish for a more searching review process, but remember that Trump is doing a pretty good job getting conservatives appointed to the Federal Bench, especially the appeals courts. Just imagine the same precedent applied by an unfriendly judge towards the agency actions of a future Democratic President -- an unfettered ability to analyze not just the process and whether the facts were gathered but for an unelected judge with a lifetime appointment to evaluate whether those policies are a good idea.
America elected the wrong President. We got the wrong FCC chairman. To suggest that somehow that doesn't mean that the wrong policies should be enacted is contrary to the norms of our country. To the extent that Trump is bulldozing those norms, the rest of us shouldn't be helping him do it.
One would think it is just simpler to charge more for the same service (Allowing the economics of mostly what is mostly inelastic-demand work it out), instead of changing the rules of regulation, that effects the planetary communication system? I would rather walk up to a live bee-hive and hit it with a bat (and expecting to not get stung) then try to kill network-neutrality. Sheeihsh!
Your great great grandparents weren't even born yet, before we already circumnavigated the globe a few times by going down that path. You are at least one century too late to be warning people about that. Why the sudden radical change now?
Nevertheless, I was pretty damn skeptical of the "government agencies are not free to abruptly reverse longstanding rules on which many have relied without a good reason." I am pretty sure that the constitution doesn't contain a single word saying the executive branch can't change its mind on things, or that Congress can't enact laws that override previous laws, and it seems as long as those branches are free to pursue whatever policies they want to, that would cover regulatory agencies.
But it seems that regardless of whatever may be in the constitution, the Supreme Court really has ruled that way and it wasn't recent (this goes back, to at least 1962; I've no idea if it goes further back than that), so the other branches have had half a century to try to re-assert their authority above SCOTUS on this matter (e.g. by proposing an amendment or changing whatever part of the US Code that SCOTUS used in 1962 to justify their decision). What we know up to now, is that neither Democrats and Republicans, each having various degrees of power over several generations, have made any effort to do so. And nearly all voters stubbornly support those parties, so I would say there is effectively zero political will in America (at least, none among people who bother to vote) to take that back. So therefore, it stands that if you're an American voter, you almost certainly agree that regulatory agencies have to justify big changes in policy rather than simply getting to do whatever that want.
Granted, you might be an outlier with a different opinion (and there's nothing wrong with that!) who always loses every single election (i.e. you have alwasys voted against the Republicans and Democrats, and so you have always lost) or you're a non-voter. If you can find enough people who believe like you, that regulatory agencies should be able to radically change policy at the drop of a hat without justification, you might be able to band with others and your party could maybe some day get up to 5% of the vote. Good luck!
Buy the people who make the laws. Oh, wait.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Sure you can. Just ignore the ones who hold the wrong opinions.
Net income has been failing on a hard down trend since 2012. This is beyond dispute; it is in the public financials.
http://finance.google.com/finance?q=NYSE:NYT
Trump was not wrong when he said the Times was failing.
http://fortune.com/2017/02/02/nyt-earnings/
Of course, there's a difference in terms of what *happens* when each packs the courts. With Democrats, you get Social Security, Healthcare, and voting rights. With Republicans you get "money == speech", voter suppression and eminent domain.
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
I can't tell you if you're trolling or just misunderstanding what the argument is about, but I'll bite.
There is a huge difference between regulations regarding blocking a competitor 100% and allowing one customer to pay for faster service, which has no net effect on others that choose not to pay for faster service EXCEPT to make them slower only by comparison to those that paid for faster service. (It's like arguing that first class mail got slower when the post office started offering priority mail service.)
That isn't what NN is about. You, the customer, are free to purchase higher or lower tiers of bandwidth. You always have been, and probably always will be. Each byte is given the same priority of service, no matter where it's bound or what type of byte it is.
Net Neutrality is all about how those bytes are handled. It affects services that you may subscribe to (Netflix, Youtube, Facebook, Skype), commercial websites you may frequent (Amazon, Reddit, Slashdot), or non-commercial sites (bit-torrent, your cousin's blog). This list is not exhaustive, but you get the idea.
If Net Neutrality is repealed, your ISP may charge you more to simply unblock any of the above -- you're not guaranteed access, because they will no longer be required to treat all bytes the same way. They may also charge the site (not you) money just to allow them onto the ISP's network. Once they're allowed, the ISP may charge you yet again to make one site -- but not other sites -- go faster for you so you can effectively use it. This is on top of the subscription fees you may already pay to the ISP and the service.
With NN, ISPs work like telephones. You may call any other phone, and talk as long as you want, under terms that apply equally to the entire class of calls. The phone company may not intentionally interfere, may not listen in, and may not dictate which other subscribers you may, or may not, call.
Without NN, ISPs get to work more like Cable TV and decide what you get and what you don't get. Don't like it? Get another ISP that offers a different package. (haha, you only have one ISP to choose from.)
Do you see the difference?
The mandate applies to the elected officials and their appointees, not to their individual policies.
For better or worse, we elect officers to exercise their judgment. In this case, it's pretty clearly for the worse.
Except of course that you're lying. What he's doing isn't this case is rolling back the Obama administrations imperial fiat declaring ISPs to be telephony services and consequently denying the cops unfettered access to your metadata under CALEA. Yes, your dear savior Obama gave away your rights to reasonable privacy, and you're complaining that the evil republican is pushing back.
Thats quite the set of rose tinted spectacles you have there. It takes an enormous amount of self delusion to have your kind of skewed view of reality
Emoluments, potential collusion with a foreign government to tip the scales in his favor in an election, obstruction of justice for firing Comey after he found out Comey wasn't going to play ball with him regarding a possible cover-up of the aforementioned collusion allegation. Those are just a few.
Now that Flynn has most likely turned states evidence, combined with Donald Jr.'s impressive stupidity when it comes to his penchant for enthusiastically incriminating himself, I believe we're going to see more than a few charges that stick to both current and former administration employees and campaign officials.
Manafort was indicted for heaven's sake.
Mueller isn't on a witch Hunt, despite what you're being told by conservative talk radio, websites and Fox News, and every day it is becoming more and more clear that someone's going to jail in the aftermath of this.
I understand that this runs counter to your comfortable narrative, but if you hadn't been coached so regularly to see the MSM as "fake news" perhaps you'd see that we're witnessing an attempted slow motion coup d'etat by a man who aspires to have as much control as Putin and other autocrats and dictators.
Trump hates democracy, and by attacking legitimate organizations so large swaths of people question their credibility, he's laying the groundwork for large scale support for an attempted at a coup once he's forced from office.
Yeah... I have and you obviously don't know what Marbury v. Madison is actually about if you are stupid enough to name-drop a Supreme Court case that never once stated that the Supreme Court allocates itself the power to arbitrarily re-instate an administrative rule that was overturned by the same administrative body that implemented the rule in the first place.
Try again.
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
You are imparting meaning to Trump's words where none exists. And it's not whether or not I "think" his words are factually incorrect,, but the evident fact that his words are indeed factually incorrect.
You are welcome on my lawn.
That's not even close to what they'd be doing. You are characterizing it dishonestly. It merely states that the SCOTUS can rule on whether or not a law (or regulation) is legal.
It has been that way since founding fathers still walked the land.
You are welcome on my lawn.
That's old news; RTFA about the Madison River/Vonage case from 2005. Lack of network neutrality proved itself a disaster because it enabled anti-competitive practices. This isn't speculation; it's what happened. And the FCC got involved to address that. That's when NN started to become a more formal (but still unpolished) policy (rather than merely a theoretically good idea).
People seem to think the recent change is just a reversal of some recent Obama thing. It's true that reversing the 2015 under-Obama order is probably the motivation for the president wanting this, but the overall policy being reversed is a decade older.
On one hand, 2005 still wasn't really a long time ago. OTOH, it's a long time in "internet years." I'd normally laugh the internet-years thing away, but it happens to be relevant when you're looking at the histories of the large companies involved in both the ISP and information services businesses (and hell yes, those are two totally different things). The last 12 years have been a big deal, and the 2005-2015 period happened under incompletely-formalized NN.
So the problem we're looking at, is what if we go back to 2004-like uncertainty where lack of NN enables anti-competitive practices again, like what Madison River was caught doing. There were a lot of businesses that we take for granted now, that couldn't start back then due to ISPs being seen as a threat, where the FCC's action opened things up. (I tend to think of 2004's internet as being very similar to today's, but it's not really true. There wasn't even such thing as Youtube, if that helps put things into historical context. And it makes sense, since things like Youtube would be severely threatened without NN or expectation of NN soon coming up in the FCC's docket. Would you put money into something like that, if you might be shook down by ISPs? And most people weren't walking around with little handheld internet terminals in their pockets, either.)
If America decides to back what Pai is trying to do (and elsewhere in this discussion, someone makes a case that this is part of what a Trump vote was for) then they're saying they're not so sure all this Youtube/Netflix/Spotify and VoIP and smartphones-running-whatever-app-you-want stuff is a good idea; you should be purchasing these services through your ISP. I think it's not so much a view that information services and ISPs are the same thing (that would be a blatantly stupid denial of reality), but rather, that we want to make them be the same thing. If you accept that a vote for Trump was a vote for repealing NN, then it follows that vote for Trump was a vote for turning the internet into AOL, Compuserve, etc.
(I'm not sure anyone could even characterize NN-repeal as pro-business with a straight face! It's very pro-ISP, though.)
I won't claim to have gotten into Trump voters' heads, but I kind of doubt that's really what they want. (e.g. they probably wouldn't even be able to keep up with their favorite president on Twitter anymore, if this happens.) But maybe? Any Trump supporters wanna share your opinion on that? Would you reverse the FCC's 2005 decision on Madison River vs Vonage (where an ISP blocked access to a competing VoIP service and the FCC slapped them for it), if you could?
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
Uhh, if the regulatory body *ISN'T* enforcing laws, SOMEONE needs to start making them do so. The laws are there for a reason (possibly bad, in one's opinion, but it's there).
Also, a sitting judge CANNOT make up new laws, if you're paying attention to the article. The judge can only keep old laws as is. As a side note: this is already happening on the State level with the many decisions Trump has tried to push through -- they're challenging the constitutionality and legality of such an order, as is their right.
IMHO, getting the supreme court to rule on this, at the very least, puts all the cards on the table in public view.
Although I am against repealing the net neutrality rules, the argument that the FCC can't repeal the rules makes no sense.
The idea that a federal agency can create rules but cannot repeal the same rules that it created, is just absurd.
This is completely wrong. ISP's used to use the phone lines, which were unquestionably Title II.
You are correct that the 1996 Act defined two types of providers "Information Service" and "Telecommunication Service", but the subsequent orders in 2002 are what started defining broadband as an "information service". There was no broadband, not in a real market sense, in 1996.
By the time 2002 rolled around, the government decided to label broadband an information service based on one or possible two things as far as I can tell. A) to purposefully mis-categorize them in order to loosen up consumer protections or B) because they have a fundamental misunderstanding of how the internet works.
Read the following description of a telecommunications provider:
Telecommunications is defined as “the transmission, between or among points specified by the user, of information of the user's choosing, without change in the form or content of the information as sent and received.”
Sounds like the internet doesn't it.
The justification for claiming it is an information service is hand waving BS. They claim that since basic equipment used in providing the internet can possibly store, re-transmit, or alter packets that this makes it an "information service".
An information service is “the offering of a capability for generating, acquiring, storing, transforming, processing, retrieving, utilizing, or making available information via telecommunications.”
Their main justifications in 2002 were that e-mail addresses assigned by your ISP and their DNS lookups were "integral" to their service and somehow made them information services (never mind that no-one uses their ISP's e-mail anymore and I've not used my ISP's DNS in a decade). Oh, and the fact that they used "computers" was also a big factor-- so if something uses a computer to process any data it can't be a telecommunication service? Think about that for a second and tell me that isn't a load of bullshit.
If that is justification, than the phone company would have been an "information service" back in 1934 when it still used the switchboard operator who "processed or transformed" your request to Call Mr. XYZ into plugging the line into the properly labeled port. Remember that the Act itself was written to prevent abuse by phone companies, which is exactly what ISP's are trying to do now.
The idea that a look-up table, or the fact that ISP's are vertically integrated, is somehow protection from being classified as utilities is outlandish.
An ISP grants me a "pipeline" to he internet by which I transmit whatever the hell I please. Due to the nature of the communication service it does store and process data. And yes, those dreaded computers are involved too, with all their new-fangled doo-dads.
I seriously doubt the intelligence of anyone who questions the Title II designation of an ISP-- at the very least I question if they understand the intent of the various definitions within the 1996 telecommunication act-- which is why I err on the "A" version of events-- where the government willfully mis-categorized the industries, probably under heavy lobbying from said industries.
Yes, there is a huge difference between those examples and both would be ok under the proposal.
Try to guess the number I'm thinking of.....
It's the number of people who voted for Trump based on his Net Neutrality stance.
It is also the number of people who voted against Trump based on his Net Neutrality stance.
Can you guess this magic number? I'll give you a hint-- It's between ZERO and ZERO.
If zero people thought this issue is important enough to change their vote, then no one cares about the issue, and any decision is fine.
Say what you want about whether NN is being "destroyed", or if it never existed in the first place... but don't fabricate a public mandate when 99.9999% of people who give a fuck disagree with what is happening.
There is no public mandate on this issue either way, because (as you point out) no one votes for a presidential candidate based on this issue. We had an election. The candidate who said he would end net neutrality won. If that bothers you, get voters to care about this issue and vote based on it in the next election.
What people who kvetch about this forget is that when you pass laws they have to be legal and consistent with previous case law.
As much as assholes like Trump believe the law is whatever they decide it will be, it doesn't work like that. They have to be Constitutional, not ignore previous rulings, and aren't subject to the whims of whatever idiot is in power.
One of the functions of the judiciary is to say "no, sorry, your law is shit, so I'm either going to have to vacate it, or basically say it must be interpreted thusly".
It's a check on the Legislative and Executive branches to ensure some ass clown of a President doesn't just decide that blacks don't really have rights or absurd shit like this. Saying judges can't strike down a law or impose an interpretation pretty much makes for a potential dictatorship and someone decides to pass terrible laws.
At which point you're neither a democracy nor a republic, you're just fucked. You do not want to live in a society in which the courts can't deem a law is invalid because it's flawed.
This repeal of Net Neutrality is an industry shill changing government regulations to improve the profits of the very industry for whom he was a paid shill.
Enjoy your oligarchy!!
Yeah, and Trump also promised a wall. That Mexico was going to pay for. Anyone seen this wall yet? Anyone seen any statements that Mexico is willing to pay for this mythical wall, should it ever be built?
No.
Trump promised to repeal or replace Obamacare. Anyone seen Obamacare getting repealed? Anyone seen Obamacare getting replaced?
No.
Trump promised great things for the coal industry. "The War On Coal Is Over!" he trumpeted. Except, coal is still a bad bet, economically, environmentally, socially. Has anyone seen a resurgent coal industry?
No.
Trump has promised tax reform, as a giveaway to the wealthy. Except, all the political analysts agree that the proposed tax legislation is a loser. It's so bad that many Republicans won't support it because it will cause gigantic growth in the federal deficit. Will it pass?
No.
Trump is the King of Broken Promises. He's the Bigliest!
They also are only talking about Hillary for 2020, which will pretty much ensure another Trump win.
Who said that? I have never heard of it even on a far left TV talk show.
Uhh.. you realize that pro-free-market and pro-business are pretty different (and often adversarial) positions, don't you? This particular FCC issue happens to even be an example of that. Try to catch up.
This is another reason she lost. People like you tried to make this a sexism thing. It wasn't. It was that she was unlikable and stunk of corruption.
I'll agree she was unlikeable, even to the point of being unelectable against any "normal" candidate. Corruption? Lots of hints, no substance, no matter the spitting red faced likes of Hannity and company proclaiming otherwise.
All I could think about when seeing her was "man, the teflon don could have taken lessons from her". Seriously, how did she never land in prison?
I suppose she never landed in prison because, surprisingly, she never actually did anything provably illegal. Much like pretty much everyone but ardent Trump and Moore supporters believe both are likely guilty of sexual assault (perhaps even a subset of their supporters) but we can't prove it. Much like we can't prove Franken groped anyone. Hint - look at the picture - you can see shadows under all fingers, which makes sense as it's a posed picture. That doesn't detract from the claim made that she was uncomfortable because of the picture, but he didn't actually grope her. And here's another question: other than her, who actually had a copy of that picture prior to her releasing it? I could go on and on about that one, but we'll leave it at that. Then there's Bush 43, who has admitted only potentially touching women, but given the number and actions and timespan, I'd far more believe the women than the spokesman's explanation.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
We The People are where that outbreak needs to happen. The 2018 elections are less than a year away, and courts don't need to do jack shit (nor does the FCC) if Congress enacts a new telecom law that clears all this up, instead of letting the FCC do ridiculous things like pretending that ISPs are information services and therefore regulated differently than the law says they should be.
And We The People sure have reasons for wanting that (which everyone is talking about and debating). It's just a question of whether or not people are going to vote for their interests next year, vs yet again surrendering. Everyone in the house and a third of the senate could be booted to the curb, if Americans could be bothered to try.
Everyone in every state needs to answer these two questions, right now:
1) Who is going to be on your 2018 ballot?
2) What are you going to do, prior to the election, about the horrible, sad, depressing answer that you just gave to question #1?
This is how an outbreak of common sense happens. By election day it is too late for common sense, but it's not too late right now.
Sure you do. Money always, different directions.
As if there is a difference.
But with Democrats, you get dozens of genders, attacks on police and Republicans, riots in the streets, and breathtaking swaths of corruption at the highest levels. The Republicans sort of shortcut the corruption cycle, and happily spend money on militarizing the police.
Not much difference. We could abandon the party distinction.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Once again you are using an 8th-grade children's book interpretation of Marbury v. Madison to come to stupid conclusions that aren't based on any proper legal analysis but merely on your subjective emotional feeling that because you personally think "net neutrality" (a term that changes meaning every time it is mentioned on Slashdot) == OMG GOOD that it is now literally unconstitutional for the government to change a regulation that was passed in 2015. That's what a dictator does, not a court.
Here's a proper analysis:
1. Was the net neutrality regulation constitutional or not? A court might decide that -- properly -- based not on the emotional bigotry of a judge but based on a judgment as to whether the statutory grant of power to the FCC and the actual rule making process of the FCC met both the statutory and constitutional requirements for administrative rule making.
2. If it turns out that the rule is not legal, then it should be overturned. If it turns out that the rule was legal, then the exact same administrative body... the FCC... that promulgated the rule can rescind it in the future by definition. It's called Democracy, not dictatorship.
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
and you just need to watch fox news to willingly slurp up their poisoned sewage... yummy!
So, smearing people with lies for decades is an effective means to run against them? Maybe in retardo-land
Rather than let this be a back-and-forth red/blue culture-wars football that changes every election, agree to a compromise, such as say allow up to 50% throttling.
Outside of videos & music, well-designed content doesn't need much bandwidth anyhow. Most of the traffic is spent on eye-candy crap.
Table-ized A.I.
You are imparting meaning to Trump's words where none exists. And it's not whether or not I "think" his words are factually incorrect,, but the evident fact that his words are indeed factually incorrect.
Trump derangement syndrome is an ugly thing.
No matter what you think about his words, they were still specifically addressing the Net Neutrality regulation. Your opinion on their correctness doesn't change the scope of his tweet as linked.
"Not to mention all the idiots who use words like boxen."
Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04, @06:49PM
the activism from the bench will be decidedly pro-business
This is likely true, but NN is neither pro-business nor anti-business. It is just favoring one group of businesses over another.
How much will Democrats force the federal government spend to investigate the Steele dossier, which they themselves funded the creation of and never bothered to corroborate or vett any claims within it before 'leaking' it to the press?
I don't know how much the federal government will spend investigating the Steele dossier but I will bet that it winds up being significantly less that the Republicans spent of investigating "Bengazi". And please address the contents of the dossier not where it originated, because if true then the contents are a damn-sight more important than who paid for it.
We can't simply say "no, fuck you".
Actually, we can. It is called "voting in the primaries".
FCC getting sued in court for rolling back rules it never had the authority to enforce in the first place?
Shame the Democrats rigged them
Bernie would have won
Uhh.. you realize that pro-free-market and pro-business are pretty different (and often adversarial) positions, don't you?
True only in the minds of Progressives.
Protip: The US does not have anything approaching a free market in most areas of commerce. Hasn't for a very long time. That's one of the reasons jobs are scarce and wages stagnant.
12 years in terms of rules on ISPs? Yes, that is longstanding.
You clearly don't have any idea what Pai is proposing, so maybe you should fucking look it up before speaking out of your ass. I'd expect much more from a 4-digit member here.
Just another day in Paradise
Currently "Net Neutrality" means nothing. All ISPers have tiered programs based on up/down speed and data transfer rates. The same ISPers in the US offer almost identical plans as EU counter parts. The problem is the loops holes in "Net Neutrality" have allowed a wasteland of tiered plans and transfer rate throttling at will.
This makes "Net Neutrality" a fallacy and an unenforceable and unworkable law.
How about that she overthrew the sovereign nation of Libya completely destabilizing it causing slavery to take root, you imperialist pig... hmmmmmm
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2017/11/27/clinton-ponders-2020-run-lets-not-forget-her-real-libya-scandal-glenn-reynolds-column/895853001/
Not necessarily true... at least theoretically, an independent could have been elected if they were to actually get more votes than either of the two main parties.
The fact that many people in the USA feel that any vote that isn't for one of the big two is a wasted one is irrelevant. If enough people voted for an independent, than an independent would, in fact, be president. Period.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Assuming you are referring to the issue with the FCC ignoring letters, 45,000 emails is not reflective of the will of the public in a country with over 300 million people, especially when it does not amount to doing anything more than basically signing your name on someone else's letter and sending it. It is reflective of the beliefs of a special interest group which has made some relatively small number of people aware enough of the issue to sympathise with their position.
I don't agree with the FCC's decision for a second here, but if you really want to say that the public's will is being ignored, then at the very least you can also say that the public did not do anywhere nearly enough to be really heard as such a voice for the people.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
The issue at hand is whether or not the FCC under the Obama Administration exceeded its authority when It reclassified the internet as a common carrier, so that the FCC could impose "net neutrality" rules. Until that reclassification, the FCC had little or not regulatory authority over the internet broadband carriers because they were classified as "information provider". It is amusing to hear talk of "established rules" when in fact the FCC in 2015 made up the reclassification in the face of then-current regulations and previous court decisions. The debate is not about the merits of "net neutrality". The debate is about the FCC's authority to reclassify the industry to push it's regulatory agenda. The internet was just fine before net neutrality and will continue to be fine after it is gone. The push for "net neutrality" is not about free and open internets, and it is not about sticking a thumb in the eye of greedy corporations.. It is about putting a framework in place to allow more federal control of the internet.
You clearly know nothing about the courts, or else you're relying on some sort of left-wing echo chamber for your facts.
For example, the USSC decision in Kelo was Stevens, Kennedy, Souter, Ginsburg, & Breyer on the side of taking the property vs. O'Connor, Rehnquist, Scalia, & Thomas on the side of not allowing the government to take it.
Baloney. Allowing Telcos and cable companies to become information highwaymen will suppress business in general and new ideas particularly. It will be one of the most anti business moves the US has ever made.
Trust busting is one of the most powerful things the US has done to promote business. You may be confusing "pandering to certain monied interests" with pro business. It is almost always anti business. Business is people without great wealth gaining the means to become well off. Our capital system confuses things by making this process captive so the already well off can reap the gains. This is not at all necessary. The economic system can be corrected so that the people who actually create the wealth can retain more of it and the people who hold position can make less. Subjecting people to the drag of a structurally privileged interest group has been demonstrated as a hallmark of underdeveloped economies. Currently the US has an underdeveloped economy.
Just a reminder, net neutrality has only been in existence for 2 years. The internet of 2015 was not a dystopian hellscape of strangled innovation.
--- There are two kinds of people, those who accept dogmas and know it, and those who accept dogmas and don't know it
every day it is becoming more and more clear that someone's going to jail in the aftermath of this.
Well duh, it's a special counsel investigation. They're not going to walk away saying, "We didn't find anything." There will be a justification for the money spent on it. There will be an indictment and probably someone will go to jail. There's a high probability that it will be due to a process crime like perjury and less likely that it's going to be due to anything Democrats are hoping for.
This is just flat-out wrong. The FCC is rolling back the new 2015 classification of internet providers which will return us to the 2015 regulations. The only difference is the unreasonable panic people have that somehow this time innovation will get suppressed. The internet did fine up to 2015, it will do fine now.
--- There are two kinds of people, those who accept dogmas and know it, and those who accept dogmas and don't know it
Nope, just rolling back the classification change from 2015. If an action was not legal before 2015 it will continue to not be legal. The 2005 example is irrelevant.
--- There are two kinds of people, those who accept dogmas and know it, and those who accept dogmas and don't know it
The government, or the companies that took on the costs of building and maintaining the pipe? It's a businesses business to run it as they see fit. If they run it poorly, then people will go to other places to get the business they want. And, if you want a faster internet, why shouldn't you pay for it? More government interference means poorer service, and less reason to innovate. You think smartphones would be what they are today, had the government not broken up "ma-bell" and deregulated the phone system?
> potential collusion with a foreign government to tip the scales in his favor in an election
This is the kind of bullshit that get a guy like Trump elected. You make yourselves look so bad that even (previously left of center classical liberals start to get the creeps.
You don't win over anyone by insulting the other guy.
Insulting the electorate isn't terribly bright either.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
> Of course, there's a difference in terms of what *happens* when each packs the courts.
This is the most deranged part of the current liberal narrative. Our "age of aquarius" with Obama occurred under a more balanced judiciary. It happened with people like Scalia and Gorsuch.
You simply don't have to pack the courts with communists.
The fact that the SCOTUS upheld the personal mandate is quite a travesty really. That was the only part of Obamacare I even objected to in the beginning.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
> With Democrats, you get Social Security, Healthcare, and voting rights
I'm a chronic cancer patient and the last thing I want from the government is "health care". Social Security is also something I hope to never have to depend on.
The US government is really bad at this "social welfare" thing. If you ever had any experience with it you would know.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
The only thing that the SCOTUS has a right to comment on is whether or not the actions of the executive (through the FCC) pass constitutional muster.
Anything beyond that is outside their powers granted under the law.
They are not a 3rd branch of the legislature, nor are they a 2nd executive.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
The court case where Net Neutrality will be saved is the one where the FCC's suit to prevent states from enacting their own NN laws will fail. Some states (eg ones that make use of voter initiatives) will have Net Neutrality and others won't. Republicans in Congress will argue about making a law supporting the FCC's position, but they won't actually pass anything. The comparison between states with NN regulations and states without them will be instructive for Congress later on.
HTH
Appeal to Authority
argumentum ad verecundiam
(also known as: argument from authority, appeal to false authority, appeal to unqualified authority, argument from false authority, ipse dixit)
Description: Using an authority as evidence in your argument when the authority is not really an authority on the facts relevant to the argument. As the audience, allowing an irrelevant authority to add credibility to the claim being made.
Its only a logical fallacy if THEY AREN'T AN ACTUAL AUTHORITY ON THE SUBJECT.
You are a walking logical fallacy.
Even if that's ALL NN was - there is no way to make one customer "faster". All they can do is artificially slow everyone down, and have you pay to remove the artificial barriers - making you "faster".
It works, see also Brexit. Unfortunately we all live in retardo-land.
Plenty of judges and professors inject their own personal politics into what they choose to advocate.
A ConLaw prof gave us the "personal mandate".
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
That last fact you mentioned IS relevant BECAUSE of the countless votes it deterred from being cast for an independent candidate. People are gaming the system and it's causing our collective will to be misrepresented to a point where the two major parties have become so arrogant, it damaged our country this time.
How much did that 4 digit UID cost you on ebay slugger?
For two : Courts making laws and forcing regulatory bodies to enforce them is a path you don't want to go down. If a sitting judge can just decide whatever he wants, and make up new law and regulations on the spot, then they effectively become Legislative, Executive and Judicial all in one.
There are a lot of perfectly valid, well-known examples of the judiciary taking a regulatory body to task, both at state and federal levels, for not obeying the laws concerning their mandates. Enforcing the law is not legislating, or making things up on the spot willy-nilly.
I didn't mean to suggest that it is irrelevant to how people might feel they ought to vote, I suggested only that it is irrelevant to the fact that if enough people voted for an independent candidate, then the USA would, in fact, get an independent president.
It may certainly be true that much of the USA population is so far led by the notion that any independent vote is a wasted one that they may be unwilling to cast such a vote, but it doesn't change the underlying truth. And I can't help but find it ironic that a country that was once upon a time looked upon by many as an almost exemplary model of democracy has so little of its citizenry actually believing that democracy might actually work.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
The main reason Hillary failed is that for most people it doesn't matter whether a bitch or a jackass is president, they want neither.
Not disagreeing with you, but IMHO there's a false equivalence in the "badness" between the two.
I don't understand how slashdot even allows an overrated mod that has not been rated yet.
Just like pretending that the truth about hillary is a "lie" or a "smear" didnt work either...
Obama didn't keep any of his campaign promises hence why we have Trump
70%
http://www.politifact.com/trut...
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
More specifically, Mr. Pai claims that industry investments have gone down since 2015, the year the Obama administration last strengthened the net neutrality rules.
There you go, he might as well argue that all roads, bridges and why not forests as well must be privatized and liberally tolled to increase investment to their maintenance and investor payback. If the law regulating telecom markets is non-functional, why focus on the old concepts while ignoring possible negative consequences? Is it just laziness, or is there an absolute time-limit of some sort? Maybe the re-creation of Minitel under one star spangled, federal network company with the French adult services accessible from the US is what this is really about.
All you need to know about the distaste for Hillary is that she is a multi-millionaire entirely because she sells influence. Sure, she was a talented lawyer and would be well-off one way or another... but there is something very galling about becoming dirty stinking rich simply by being well-connected. Not that there's anything particularly special about the way Donald Trump took a small fortune and slightly underperformed the S&P to make a large fortune (maybe?), but inherited wealth is something people are accustomed to. If you want someone who epitomizes "the Washington establishment", it's Hillary - and people were in an anti-establishment mood.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
one sheep voting to gut, stuff and mount two wolves and the wolves somehow inexplicably going along with it. See, I can use silly anthologies too.
You know, there is such a thing as solutions to problems, right? You want the smaller states to have a say but I don't want them getting a disproportionate (and therefor un-democratic) amount of power since. It's staring you in the face you know. It's called a parliamentary system (minus the UK's house of lords because why the _hell_ would you do that if you weren't daft).
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
I voted Hillary but saw a lot of people I respect both professionally and privately that went Trump for one of two reasons
1. Their personal finances/business (I think this is a fair reason, of morally gray)
2. They thought that by voting g for trump they were voting against
Wow. No.
Pro business as end game = Monopolies and Trusts
Pro Free Market as an end game = Competition that benefits consumers
Itâ(TM)s not a fallacy if they are AN ACTUAL AUTHORITY
Those aren't very interesting criticisms, since you picked the ones that weren't true. Here are some that are more interesting: She charged an extremely high speaking fee at a charity dinner (IIRC it was around half of what the event brought in) instead of making a donation herself. She made contradictory campaign promises to different groups of people. She's unlikeable--and please don't attribute that to her being a woman. Nobody says that about the majority of female politicians. She entered politics by marriage instead of by election. She got special privileges from the DNC which were designed to prevent her opponents from having a fair chance.
Sure, she was qualified for the job. She would have made a decent president. But she didn't play by the rules, and didn't really show any significant redeeming qualities (as a person) which would have let people look past her shortcomings.
A cat can't teach a dog to bark.
Right? An unelected regulatory body that oversees Comcast and Verizon and yet is beholden to Verizon and Comcast is sooooo much better than stupid libtard democracy. Suck Putin's cum from Trump's ass much?
I'm actually fairly sure that the number of people who did NOT vote for her because she's a woman is about on par with the number of people who voted for her exclusively for that reason.
Her gender should make no difference, and it makes no difference for me. She's a despicable human being. About as much as Trump. To quote my grandpa (he said that in 1942, so apologies for the language), "what really matters in the end is not whether you're Aryan or not, but whether you're an asshole or not".
Sadly, an asshole understood what he meant.
As long as we cling to superficial, irrelevant matters, we will not get better outcomes from elections. We care about whether someone prays to the "right" imaginary friend instead of asking what plans they have to balance the budget. We make their gender, skin color or sexual preference an issue instead of wondering what they have planned to give our kids a better education and return the US to the top of scientific research.
A friend of mine once said it, and I can only agree: The US will be a democracy once a Jewish, lesbian, black woman becomes president, but only if she wins because she's got the better program and not because she's a Jewish, lesbian, black woman.
Sadly, we're further from this than ever.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
So I can decide what corporate shill will eventually run against the corporate shill the other side of The Party managed to field?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
You know, the last time this actually happened, it took 4 years of civil war to beat some sense into people.
It's already been a century, too, since anyone who wasn't part of The Party to come in second.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
No, but they EITHER have to be on topic OR about Trump. Or at least Hillary. But not about any has-beens.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
People either want to blame the administration or now the judges, when it's congress' job to pass a law.
If Net Neutrality is repealed, your ISP may charge you more to simply unblock any of the above -- you're not guaranteed access, because they will no longer be required to treat all bytes the same way. They may also charge the site (not you) money just to allow them onto the ISP's network. Once they're allowed, the ISP may charge you yet again to make one site -- but not other sites -- go faster for you so you can effectively use it. This is on top of the subscription fees you may already pay to the ISP and the service... Don't like it? Get another ISP that offers a different package. (haha, you only have one ISP to choose from.),
Well in fact, I have several ISPs to choose from, and if my current ISP decided to pull shenanigans like you describe, I would quickly switch to a competitor.
If everyone had several ISPs to choose from, would you trust the free market (rather than a regulatory bureaucracy) to prevent such shenanigans?
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
When it comes to business the courts have a poor track record.
Look at cases like the DOJ vs. M$, the whole antitrust trial and the penalty was a joke with M$ getting off with a slap on the wrist.
How much does it actually cost to buy a judge anyway?
We're not yet at the Hillary is a has-been phase yet? Is there a countdown timer somewhere that can help out?
Okay, so she took a speaking fee for speaking at a charitable event. Presumably the people setting up the event knew what they were signing her up for. and what they were paying, and I'd assume that wasn't one of Clinton's favorite charities. You want to cite a good charity record for Trump?
EVERYBODY makes contradictory campaign promises to different groups of people. Clinton was unusually honest in the campaign. Trump was the opposite.
She's unlikeable - okay, I can buy that one. Definitely low charisma.
She got elected to the Senate. What was Trump's previous political experience?
She won the Democratic primaries, as a general rule. In situations that might be more easily rigged, such as caucuses, Sanders tended to do better. Even without superdelgates, she would have won the nomination.
So, almost everything people say bad about Clinton is either false or not as bad as what Trump said or did. Trump may be considered more likeable than Clinton, and that's about it.
Clinton didn't lose because of bad things she did. That's obvious.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
I've seen lots of accusations against her. Typically, when I look into them, they wind up being lies, gross exaggerations, or not that bad. To put this another way, nobody has been able to supply good evidence for her being despicable, so the "despicable" part comes first and then people try to fake up reasons to believe it.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
We know that Trump and associates had a lot of business ties with Russia. We know that they lied about them. We know that Russia interfered with the US election process. We know that Trump pushed some seriously pro-Russia policies.
Based on that, there is potential collusion with a foreign government to tip the scales in his favor in an election. I'm not saying that it happened, I'm saying that it might have and it's worth investigating. What ulterior motives do you have in saying that reasonable speculation on sound evidence makes us look bad?
Trump's campaign was very, very heavy on the insults. He hasn't stopped. It appears that you do win over people by insulting the other guy.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Gorsuch was nominated by Trump after the Republicans completely stonewalled Obama's moderate nominee. He was not on the Supreme Court while Obama was President.
Can you name one Communist judge in the US Federal Court system, past or present? Every President has gone along with that 100%.
The personal mandate is essential to have a functioning health care system. Other than that, people wait until they have a serious medical condition and then buy a policy that covers it. This means that insurance companies exclude pre-existing conditions, and that kills people.
The Supreme Court has made what I consider mistakes, but very few travesties.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
No, the Supreme Court makes decisions based on laws other than the Constitution a lot of the time. One thing they do sometimes is take up different interpretations of Federal statutes in different circuits and decide which interpretation will be consistently followed.
In this case, there may be legal restrictions on what processes the FCC has to follow. Obviously they have the legal ability to change the 2015 decision, and the courts aren't going to stop that, but they may have to provide some sort of evidence it would be a good idea.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
*golf clap* someone mod this up
Yeah, I agree that nothing she did was that bad, unless she was complicit in rigging primaries/caucuses, and I'm too far removed from the scene (literally and figuratively) to know anything except how it looked.
Clinton didn't lose because of bad things she did. That's obvious.
Like I said, it's a double whammy of the relatively minor bad stuff she's done (and the stories about her which seem to be by and large untrue), and the fact that people don't like her. Trump is a despicable human being, but damn does he have charisma. Well, I didn't watch his speeches, but from based on articles about his campaign, he's in touch with his audience like a professional comedian or storyteller. He was so in touch with the emotion of his audience that he talked shit, not even paying attention to the truth or falsity of his words. It's as if he started a state of collective flow and had no focus left to think about wtf he was actually saying. But why that was enough to make him win--or why Clinton's shortcomings were enough to make her lose--is an analysis I can't make. But it is an absolute certainty that there was more at play than her sex.
A cat can't teach a dog to bark.
Well, you never know, she might want to try again in 2020.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.