Six Tech Companies Filing Net Neutrality Lawsuit (thehill.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Hill: Six technology companies, including Kickstarter, Foursquare and Etsy, have launched a lawsuit against the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in an effort to preserve net neutrality rules. The companies, which also include Shutterstock, Expa and Automattic, on Monday filed their petition with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The companies join Vimeo and Mozilla, as well as several state attorneys general who have also filed lawsuits against the FCC in support of the net neutrality rules. Like the other lawsuits, their new case hinges on the Administrative Procedure Act, which they argue prevents the FCC from "arbitrary and capricious" redactions to already existing policy. "Already, over 30,000 Etsy sellers participated in the FCC's public comment process, and tens of thousands more reached out to Congress in support of net neutrality. Now we're bringing their stories and experiences to the courts," said Althea Erickson, head of advocacy and impact at Etsy.

Comments

Congress

[Tulsa_Time]

You can't sue Congress for not passing the laws you like....

Although many now turn to the Judicial Branch as a new source of defacto legislation.

Re:Congress

[FudRucker]

what part of democratic do you not understand, if enough people disagree with this then they will be compelled to keep net neutrality because enough constituents demanded it so...

Re:Congress

[Obfuscant]

what part of democratic do you not understand,

What part of FCC makes you think of democracy? Even so, when was the vote for net neutrality that shows that "enough people" want the FCC to do it instead of, say, the FTC or maybe congress?

Re:Congress

[Tulsa_Time]

Actually you are correct.... They hope to show that the FCC does in fact have the ability to mandate NN. The FCC has recently said it does not. It didn't rule against NN per se... just that the FCC cannot make that rule under its charter.

Re:Congress

[DogDude]

... you buy your members of Congress BEFORE they write the laws. But, you can always pay them to change them back, too. From what I've seen, congresspeople are *significantly* cheaper than a lawsuit.

Congresspeople only cost a few thousand a year: http://www.businessinsider.com...

A basic, simple, straightforward lawsuit between two individuals or small companies is going to start in the six figures.

Nothing ever goes away

[Obfuscant]

"Like the other lawsuits, their new case hinges on the Administrative Procedure Act, which they argue prevents the FCC from "arbitrary and capricious" redactions to already existing policy."

In other words, once a policy is implemented it can never be rescinded, even if it should not have been implemented in the first place, because someone, somewhere will always think that rescinding it is "arbitrary and capricious", no matter how much discussion and consideration the agency went through. It does not matter if the creation was arbitrary and capricious, the deletion must not occur.

Is there a renewed uproar over the removal of CW requirements for amateur radio licenses? That change certainly was arbitrary and capricious.

there needs to be some bigger players

[FudRucker]

like Google & Microsoft & IBM getting in on this, the more the better. it needs to gain in size and strength like a snowball effect

Re:there needs to be some bigger players

[Anonymous Coward]

No, when billion dollar multinationals are conspiring, you can be very confident that they care conspiring against the working class.

Obama's "network neutrality" was not at all what you think it was. It was a power grab to give LEO the ability to compel access through CALEA. It didn't do anything at all that you want from network neutrality. It didn't stop throttling certain services, it just required a few million in legal fees to justify it. It certainly didn't do anything to address prices, as it increased the capital costs (think CALEA and mandatory wiretaps) to build new last mile infrastructure. It gave IBM a market for analyzing your data.

Nothing about this is good about this imperial fiat unless you're the incumbent large corporation.

they are not our friends

[houghi]

Just because they are the enemies of our enemies does not make them our friends. The fact that they have the same goals this time is nice, but irrelevant in the long term.

Re:they are not our friends

[sconeu]

This is always true.

The enemy of my enemy is my enemy's enemy. Nothing more, nothing less. It may make us temporary allies, but not necessarily friends.

Re:they are not our friends

[deathguppie]

The price of guava juice in Brazil is what you say?

I can't get what you are saying, are you defending the right of ISP's to censor content?

I don't care about what companies may or may not do in the past or in the future, I care about what is happening now. If I can I'll try to protect my rights for future use but this thread is about my rights online and bringing up that the companies now trying to protect my right online may have future intent is irrelevant and seems like an attempt to obfuscate the subject we are concerned with now.

Re: No case

[BranMan]

I think I just threw up a little in my mouth...