Supreme Court Nominee Brett Kavanaugh Opposes Net Neutrality (arstechnica.com)

Beardydog writes: An article currently on Ars Technica examines comments about net neutrality issues by recent Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. Kavanaugh not only rejects the FCC's reclassification of ISPs under Title II, but seems to also support a broad First Amendment right to "editorial control," allowing ISPs to selectively block, filter, or modify transmitted data.

Kavanaugh compares ISPs to cable TV operators, rather than phone companies. "Deciding whether and how to transmit ESPN and deciding whether and how to transmit ESPN.com are not meaningfully different for First Amendment purposes." Here's what Ars Technica had to say about Kavanaugh's argument, which did not address the business differences between cable TV and internet service: "Cable TV providers generally have to pay programmers for the right to carry their channels, and cable TV providers have to fit all the channels they carry into a limited amount of bandwidth. At least for now, major internet providers don't offer a set package of websites -- they just route users to whichever sites the users are requesting. ISPs also don't have to pay those websites for the right to 'transmit' them, but ISPs have argued that they should be able to demand fees from websites."

The report also mentions Kavanaugh's support of NSA surveillance: "In November 2015, Kavanaugh was part of a unanimous decision when the DC Circuit denied a petition to rehear a challenge to the NSA's bulk collection of telephone metadata. Kavanaugh was the only judge to issue a written statement, which said that '[t]he Government's collection of telephony metadata from a third party such as a telecommunications service provider is not considered a search under the Fourth Amendment.' Even if this form of surveillance constituted a search, it wouldn't be an 'unreasonable' search and therefore it would be legal, Kavanaugh also wrote."

Comments

Re:Judges, not legislators

[lhunath]

This is exactly what you are seeing here. A judge interpreting what the law (constitution) tries to say about a distributor (ISP). In this case, the judge appears to see the distributor of Internet content to be the one who chooses how that Internet content should appear if consumed through their network. That is a perfectly valid if not disastrously incompatible interpretation of "Internet" as is currently understood by Internet users. We tend to think of the Internet as a thing in and of itself, where this judge appears to think of it as a pool of possible things that an ISP can cherry-pick content from to serve up for you.

Note that supreme court judges are different from regular judges in how their interpretations are made and how they are applied. For one, AFAIK, they do not hear experts, they are the experts.

So, is anyone going to change how they vote?

[rsilvergun]

/. has a lot of older folks on it, many of them have done quite well for themselves and many are right wing. Many voted for Trump (few seem to want to admit it).

Trump opposed Net Neutrality, supports TPP, has rolled back none of Obama's executive orders on H1-B visas (he could have stopped spouses from working in this country with the stroke of a pen on day 1). He let Carrier and Harley Davidson get away with sending jobs overseas after they both got fat checks from the government for keeping them here. He's cut back the VA and is attacking pre-existing condition coverage (again, /. has lots of older folks who depend on both those things). His tax cut is causing the treasure to raise interest rates to keep inflation in check driving up prices for things like houses, cars and schools. This supreme court nominee is probably going to overturn Roe v Wade, and let's not forget why we legalized abortion in America. And let's not forget the whole separating kids of asylum seekers thing or the fact that the money trail for all those detention centers leads back to him and his friends. I could go on, and on...

His administration did just allow 3D printed guns. I'll give you that.

I guess what I'm saying is, I get it, he's not Hilary. But Hilary's gone, and Trump's poll numbers don't budge. I know Trump supporters are out there on this forum. I also know they mostly keep to themselves on political issue. But if any are out there willing to raise their voices I want to ask: what, if anything, will make you stop supporting him?

On the whole second amendment thing

[rsilvergun]

you oppose standing armies, right? Because that was a large part of why the 2nd amendment exists ya know?

Sorry, I know it's off topic, but it seems a silly thing to hang everything on. Even a well armed citizenry is no match for a modern military. Hell, it's been like that for centuries. The only reason America won it's revolution is the British were too busy with the French and the French were actively helping us to oppose Britain. Heck, we got beat by the Canadian army for Pete's sake...

Also, are you really sure he's going to defer to the authors of the Constitution and not his corporate buddies? Don't forget the media feeding you all this information is owned lock stock and barrel by mega corps who would very much like you to think that.

You need to eat yourself

[raymorris]

Certainly SCOTUS needs to look at the words on the page, not what they think SHOULD have been in Constitution.

That said, the following exchange just happened at my house:

Person1: You need to eat.
Person2: You need to yourself.

What would an appropriate response be? "You need to eat yourself" could have two meanings, but we know what the person meant when they said it. The intended meaning guides our interpretation.

When we read the newspaper headline "Children make nutritious snacks", we know the author means children are cooking, not that they are snacks. We interpret it bases on what the writer meant.

Unfortunately, the authors of the Constitution occasionally uses words that mean something different today than they did 200 years ago, words that aren't 100 crystal clear, and in at least one case, words that seem to contradict each other. What meaning should be ascribed to those words? Fortunately, the founders also wrote hundreds of pages telling us exactly what they meant by those words, and why they said what they said. It seems clear to me that is something to consider to selecting which meaning to use - the meaning the writer intended.

It's not esteem

[rsilvergun]

not much anyway. Patriotism is waning here quite a bit. But Americans are very, very conservative. Not right wing (which is what most people think of when they hear the word) but actually conservative. We're terrified of change. Wages have been falling for 40 years we've got multiple wars going on and if you're under 50 odds are you're worse off than your parents (I know I am). Change has been bad for most of us. So the last thing we want is anyone mucking about with the document that defines our basic government.

And we've got good reason to be afraid. I know the Koch brothers were trying to take over the state legislatures so they could call a Constitutional convention. They fell just short of the votes to do it too (they lost a few special elections due to some really, really bad candidates. Like literal Nazi grade bad). I can't imagine they had anything good in store if they had been able to call a convention.

Keep in mind that as a country we can't even get everybody to agree that everyone deserves healthcare. We're kind of at each other's throats over here....

Re:Judges, not legislators

[fafalone]

Please find the exact clause and wording in the Constitution where it grants the government the right to tell a private company what it can and cannot distribute to customers voluntarily consuming its services. You can't, because it doesn't exist.

It's right after the line that says corporate entities are people and have the same rights. And that great clause about money being speech.
ISPs have near monopoly status and receive taxpayer subsidies for a service considered as essential as electric and telephone. You, and this judge, have some psychotic view of corporate personhood where they can still remain exempt from additional regulations that other companies don't have to abide by, and that's bullshit. This has nothing to do with the Constitution.
And take your business elsewhere to who ffs? You think the local cable/DSL duopoly is competition? That LTE counts? That a 3rd provider is actually widespread? There is effectively no competition and you're either shockingly ignorant for a Slashdot poster, or more likely as is typically the case among conservatives who aren't otherwise fools, flagrantly intellectually dishonest.

Re:I should add

[Green Mountain Bot]

The Trump Administration's intentional acts to undermine Obamacare are responsible for skyrocketing costs and a massive shrinking of services.

Fixed it for you.

Re:I should add

[Mab_Mass]

Repealing Obamacare will bring prices back into control, greatly reduce drug costs, and improve the quality of care all around. It's a good thing. You should be for it.

Bullshit. Health care costs were skyrocketing before this law passed, with widespread denial of care to anyone with a pre-existing condition. A full-on repeal will just return us to the even worse system that we had before the Obama and the Dems gave us the current horrible system.