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

A plot twist

[Sarten-X]

For your consideration, I submit the following (hopefully sarcastic) theory:

By enacting the most ridiculous federal policies while projecting a personality of being complete and utter assholes, Trump's administration is opening the political path for states to invoke their own contrary policies while their governors are hailed as heroes, thus ultimately fulfilling the Republican stated goal of empowering states.

The only question, then: Is Trump intelligent and self-aware enough to pull off such a plan?

Re:A plot twist

[sabri]

Republican stated goal of empowering states.

No. Although I do think this is the correct way to do things, it is for a different reason. As I've said on /. before: 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. 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.

And that is exactly what this legislation does: as with other states, the states are acting as a consumer, not as a lawmaking entity. Thus, the market is doing what it is supposed to do: large customers dictate to a supplier how they would like to see the business being run, and threaten to vote with their feet.

And this is how net neutrality should be brought back to life. Not by government laws, but by government spending. Big difference philosophically, same effect.

Re:A plot twist

[burtosis]

Yea, remember that now in 2018 half Trillion usd that we Americans gave to ISP? They now have stolen half a trillion dollars. Maybe this eli5 description will help you understand that companies will just fucking steal the money by socializing the costs and privatizing the gains. No, dumping more money on these asshats will make it worse. To make it end, hold each and every one of these criminals responsible, up the regulations several orders of magnitude to the point of bringing felony criminal charges to the CEO and board every offense, and put the protection back on the consumer instead of protecting and diverting public funds to for profit companies that commit crimes.

Re:A plot twist

[burtosis]

lol that's not a problem, it took years of lobbying and massive inside collusion with competitors to price fix nearly all internet in America.

Re:A plot twist

[DNS-and-BIND]

The federal government has always been so. It's just noticeable to you because of Trump.

Re:A plot twist

[Darinbob]

I don't think that's right. The extremist Republicans don't really want to empower states, they only want to empower their own states, and only the states and never the counties or municipal governments. If they had their way they would force states to outlaw marijuana and gay marriage. Extremist Democrats would be similar, preferring that their states are independent but other states follow their guidelines.

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.

Re:A plot twist

[Visarga]

Apparently it is the job of the government to stop people from deploying their own ISPs. /s

Re:A plot twist

[Visarga]

> We can try multiple solutions in different states, and get a better idea which ones work and which ones don't.

You're naive, the monopolist ISPs already know what they want to do, they don't need to test and find out. They want exactly what they lobbied to do.

Re:A plot twist

[cfalcon]

Yes, of course the infrastructure monopolists know what they want. Using states as a test bed will actually produce some data, if anyone still cares about that. It's not a bad idea for getting data on internet regulation, and it is really coming into its own regarding cannabis regulation. If anyone is looking for information, it could inform future decisions.

But you are correct that right now, everyone has their heels dug in and it has nothing to do with data. The top level net neutrality overturn was a battle of one group of infrastructure monopolists versus content monopolists, and each backed a different horse in a high stakes presidential race. The fact that one of these is marginally better for our wallets is happenstance, nothing more.

Re:A plot twist

[cfalcon]

Also: the net neutrality executive order seems open to subversion by some shenanigans involving shell companies, but assuming that this doesn't occur or is punished if and when it does, it's absolutely the type of thing that your standard voting Republican should get behind.

- It doesn't affect what companies in the marketplace can do, it only affects how the state government makes its contracts. As such, it has no effect on the, err, "mom and pop ISPs". I have no idea if these actually are real, but they were certainly used by anti-NN apologists.

- It doesn't have any of the carrier reclassification or potential first amendment concerns of the actual FCC net neutrality that was put in place. This was also used to drag net neutrality through the mud, and was a legitimate concern- of course, if this had been the ACTUAL concern, the FCC could simply have offered clarification or policy that ameliorated these concerns.

This executive order doesn't offer the feeble handholds that anti-NN talking points could grasp for the FCC version. I bet more states could pull this trick or something similar, if they wanted.

Re: A plot twist

[cfalcon]

Things that are still mostly within the power of the states force anyone who wants policy to deal more closely with those affected by said policy- it may be cheaper to buy off a governor, it may be easier to get a state constitutional amendment, it may be easier to get your message out, but the impact is more limited. There aren't many ways to offer pushback against a large powerful conglomeration, but the state-level breakdown does offer some hedge.

You also have experimentation: legal cannabis, for instance, has not imploded any states. This proves that a VAST number of the alarmist theories posited by anti-cannabis activists were overblown, and this will be taken into account by the voters, if by no one else. Most people have come around on the idea that cannabis should be legal in Colorado, but if you ask pro-legalization people about whether Utah should be allowed to keep cannabis illegal in a world where it no longer has "federally banned" status, you are going to get a variety of answers, some drawing from inalienable rights and others drawing from traditional separation of powers.

Re:A plot twist

[cyberchondriac]

- 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.

I was with you except for the last part; for the vast majority of things, they should stay set at the state level. Different geography, demographics, climate, resources, history, and culture dictate different needs and approaches from state to state. Nothing drastic, but it is after all how the country was established, sort of a modular approach. Large monolithic governments tend to be inefficient and easily grow corrupt. We're the only nation in the world that comprises separate states: states, not provinces, counties or municipalities, the latter being nothing more than small organizational constructs to serve the overall hierarchy of the state. The States however do not or should not relate to the Federal gov't that way.

That said, there are some things that are best regulated at the Fed level (such as national defense and currency), and NN is one I'd be okay with, because I'm of the opinion that the Internet should be treated like a public utility, and, because it's a nationwide and even global system, the federal government has justification for ensuring fair operation.

Re:A plot twist

[sabri]

The market can't handle it because in most places there isn't any market.

Yes, and this is what needs to be fixed. Fuck net neutrality: fix the market and NN will fix itself.

New Jersey says....

[Notabadguy]

Me too! Me too!

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:So how are they going to enforce this?

[SlaveToTheGrind]

How is NJ going to enforce this? Are they going to investigate complains from everyone and investigate every time someone's net access slows down?

I've been asking the same question about how the FCC was practically supposed to enforce NN for a long time. This doesn't seem conceptually different other than creating a lot of interesting cross-border questions about what part of an ISP's network is really slowing the traffic down.

Liability

[Anonymous Coward]

Companies won't be able to hide the deals being made for special access to customers, so if those deals are rolled out in NJ, they'll sue the ISP.

" web content in favor of VoIP?"
Are you telling me you cannot deliver me BOTH 256kbps VOIP AND web content at the same time??
Isn't that just a specious claim? the claim that ISP's want to 'prioritize telemedicine over Netflix' is bullshit claim design to play one customer off against another. Each customer paid for the bandwidth, the ISP has the obligation to carry BOTH to the spec the customer paid for.

"I know we sold you this car, but you cannot use it today because another customer needs it to take a crippled orphan to cancer hospital... why are you being so selfish insisting you can use your car?"

Just "web traffic", huh?

[Trogre]

Do they understand what net neutrality means, or is it just sloppy reporting?

Measure it

[Anonymous Coward]

Each ISP *already* measures the bandwidth to its interconnects, that's how they enforce their own contracts.

You cannot hide slowing down of Internet connections, as soon as Verizon slowed down 4k video to force the downgrade of youtube and netflix to 1080p, it was instantly observed and reported on. Of course Verizon also stream their own video, which is 1080p only, and in downgrading the connection, they happen to also cripple competitors down to their own level, so you'd expect the FCC to act on its Net Neutrality and stop Verizon slowing the connection, but with Chairman Pai in power, he simply didn't enforce it.

Now the law and enforcement of the law are taken out of his hands.

Re:So how are they going to enforce this?

[Plus1Entropy]

QoS and load balancing, which is what you're talking about, is not the issue. Even favoring certain content which requires low latency is not the issue.

Say, for example, an ISP was slowing Skype to encourage people to buy their digital phone package. That would violate NN.

Do you understand the difference?

Re:Another state enforces NN rules

[sjames]

Yes, the feds could have made it much easier by being a one stop shop for demonstrating compliance, but the FCC is derelict in it's duty so they'll have to deal with each state individually.

Re:Definition of treason

[HiThere]

From the US Constitution:
Section 3. Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort. No person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open court.

I don't think either the states or Trump fit this definition, but Trump is clearly closer to a fit. The states have not been shown to even be in correspondence with a foreign power. And it's not clear what the definition of enemies is, so Russia probably doesn't count, which lets Trump off the charge (of treason) no matter what secret deals are revealed.

Re:States don't have the authority

[Green Mountain Bot]

States absolutely do have the authority to set requirements for vendors doing business with them. Further, the FCC has not been granted by congress the power to preempt states from enacting their own Net Neutrality rules, so it's highly questionable whether that portion of their policy is legal.

Situational eth-hacks

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Warning! Shift! Shift! Shift!

You now love states' rights and hate the feds' interstate commerce clause, or now love the feds' interstate commerce clause and hate states' rights, depending on your position on net neutrality, as opposed to how you felt about them when you got up this morning.

[Insert sarc mark here]

Re:Situational eth-hacks

[MSTCrow5429]

I have mixed feelings about the Commerce Clause, fully support co-sovereignty, while also hating so-called net neutrality on the State level.

Boom.

"Consumer protections"

[MSTCrow5429]

This phrase, and derivatives thereof, always mean one thing and always go one way, irrespective of the facts or context for the given issue for the given time.

Re:BY LAW...

[cfalcon]

The red/blue split is such that the states can't agree on anything important in numbers worth worrying the federal government. The supreme court's fundamental supremacy is at this point not even questioned: of course they can strip away state level abortion laws based on individual-rights reasoning, while also upholding the right of the federal government to ban substances such as cannabis, a power nowhere enumerated. Each controversial ruling, whether you are in favor or opposed, has exactly one purpose, one common constant: the federal apparatus enforces homogeneity on the states.