New Jersey Governor Signs Net Neutrality Order (thehill.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Hill: New Jersey on Monday became the latest state to implement its own net neutrality rules following the Federal Communications Commission's repeal of the Obama-era consumer protections. Gov. Phil Murphy (D) signed an executive order prohibiting all internet service providers that do business with the state from blocking, throttling or favoring web content.

"We may not agree with everything we see online, but that does not give us a justifiable reason to block the free, uninterrupted, and indiscriminate flow of information," Murphy said in a statement. "And, it certainly doesn't give certain companies or individuals a right to pay their way to the front of the line. "While New Jersey cannot unilaterally regulate net neutrality back into law or cement it as a state regulation, we can exercise our power as a consumer to make our preferences known," he added. Gurbir Grewal, New Jersey's attorney general, also announced on Monday that the state would be the 22nd to join a lawsuit against the FCC.

Comments

Re:NJ is on notice

[HiThere]

Read the constitution. Treason has a definition, and neither the states nor Trump have committed it. But Trump's come a lot closer.

Re:A plot twist

[Solandri]

I believe that the government has no business meddling with an ISP's class of service configuration. The government does not own the infrastructure, and does not pay for the operations.

Actually, the bone of contention here is that the ISP's lines go through (government-mandated and controlled) public easements. Without the government clearing the way for the easement, each ISP would have to negotiate with thousands if not millions of private landowners for rights to send their wires through their land. You might not be able to get any cable or phone service because the homeowner at the corner of your street refused to let any companies lay down wire through his property.

Since it's the govenrment which allows ISPs access to all customers, the government also has the power to regulate it.

Most importantly, if there is a market for a certain business model where one stream of traffic gets priority over another: let the market handle it.

The market can't handle it because in most places there isn't any market. The local government has granted the cable and phone companies local monopolies. There is no competition. Customers cannot make their displeasure known by switching to a different ISP if both of them decide to throttle services which don't pay them. Like you, I think this is something better left up to the market to decide. But for that to happen, we first need to get rid of the local monopolies so that there's actually competition. Barring that, net neutrality is a good alternative.

I do prefer the way it's happening now - each state is deciding for itself how it wants to handle this. That's kinda the whole point of having states instead of a single Federal government deciding everything like in most other countries. We can try multiple solutions in different states, and get a better idea which ones work and which ones don't. Then we can pick the best solution and implement it at the Federal level. That's a far better process than some Federal official deciding all by himself, without evidence nor data to back him up, based solely on philosophical or ideological grounds, that net neutrality is the way to go, and forcing the entire country to go along with his decision.