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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.
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
Except the FTC was legally barred from doing exactly that, and the FCC assigned the role of overseeing ISPs.
Yes, which is what the FCC is trying to reverse. The FCC is proposing going back to the previous model which they judge more apt at managing ISPs than the 2015 regulations. Anyone opposing this is hoping their supporters don't actually research the issues and the timeline, and it is why you see vague articles about "Net Neutrality" rather than comprehensive coverage of what is actually happenning and what is the context of it.
The previous rules in place worked for 19 years.
"Not to mention all the idiots who use words like boxen."
Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04, @06:49PM
BS Alert. The FCC was ordered to get involved in 2015; until then it was the FTC.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
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.
Tom Wheeler ,the former head of the FCC, dismantled Ajit Pai's arguments for net-neutrality.
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
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.
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?