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.

Comments

Re:Long standing rules ? Courts making legislation

[Anonymous Coward]

I love all this winning. Can't get enough. Only people complaining about net neutrality are the Hillary supporters.

Re:Long standing rules ? Courts making legislation

[MightyYar]

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).