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

Judges, not legislators

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure why this is so hard for people to understand - judges don't (and shouldn't) make the laws. They only attempt to interpret them as cases are brought before them where a violation is claimed.

Want different laws? Elect different legislators.

Re:Judges, not legislators

[Anonymous Coward]

+1 naive

Re: Judges, not legislators

[saloomy]

How is dragnet record requests from ISPs and telecom carriers not unreasonable?? Sorry, but I disagree with you. Stupid interpretation can be bad for the freedoms and laws we have enshrined. Because of our stupid two party system, we may not always have the right political climate to fix what was once done. The 4th would never fly if it were being proposed today. Too many blue lives / law and order types who don't see the value of privacy, and can't imagine their freedoms being taken away because "governments never persecute good Christians".

Re: Judges, not legislators

[Pinky's Brain]

It might be an unreasonable search of the carrier's property, if that carrier doesn't simply cooperate when asked nicely.

If the carrier cooperates you really need the constitutional right to privacy to have much of a point of declaring even that unreasonable, the legal reasoning behind that has always been shaky to say the least.

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.

Re: Judges, not legislators

[Bert64]

Because you as the user have chosen to give away that data to the carrier...
They are not searching data you hold, they are searching data the carrier holds which you have given to them.
So it's not placing an unreasonable burden on you, as the end user.

Wether it's unreasonable for the carrier is another matter.

Re:Judges, not legislators

[prisoner-of-enigma]

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.

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.

You see, this is one of the problems of wanting an "activist judiciary." Just because you want your ISP to work a certain way doesn't give you the right to force them to do so. The proper course of action is to vote with your wallet and take your business elsewhere. Don't act like you can't; it's a rare case these days where you have no choice of ISP's. You'd be outraged if the government ordered an ISP to not carry some specific content. The reciprocal of that is the government has no right to stop them from not carrying it. You cannot have one without the other. The alternative is government control of content, something any liberal or conservative should rightly oppose.

This is what freedom looks like. It is not perfect, never will be, and any attempt to make it so will eventually backfire when you hand the government too much control. The best control will always be in the hands of the people making economic choices of their own free will. No company can long withstand a situation where customers are dissatisfied with their product or service. Either their competition will drive them to bend or new competitors will spring up to serve market demand.

Re: Judges, not legislators

[whoever57]

They are not searching data you hold, they are searching data the carrier holds which you have given to them. So it's not placing an unreasonable burden on you, as the end user.

"unreasonable burden" isn't the issue here. The question is whether you have an expectation of privacy, having given that data to a company. Personally, I expect my phone company to keep my phone records private.

Since phones are effectively required for life in the USA, you don't have a choice about giving that data, only a choice of which company you give the data to.

Re:Judges, not legislators

[prisoner-of-enigma]

Want different laws? Elect different legislators.

Nah, that makes far too much sense to try. Much better to have judges "make" law even though they have no Constitutional prerogative to do so. That pesky Constitution is GREAT except for all the places WE don't like, so it should be selectively enforced or ignored on a whim. That'll work out GREAT! What could possibly go wrong? It's not like giving government arbitrarily vast powers has EVER been bad people, right?

Re:Judges, not legislators

[Plus1Entropy]

How about you go read the Federalist Papers (and even the Anti-Federalist Papers) about what the people who actually wrote the Constitution had to say about the power of the Judiciary?

The Founders absolutely intended for Judges to have the power to say whether laws themselves are legal.

Re:Judges, not legislators

[lhunath]

Certainly the constitution doesn't care about granting the government the right of telling a company what to do, that would be serious overreach. It's really just an interpretation of what it means that the constitution *doesn't* tell us how to think of the Internet.

Does that mean that the Internet is something that only exists as whatever comes out of your end of the cable when you buy a service with a local Internet provider? If so, it makes sense to think of the Internet as a product that is generated by your local ISP, and therefore, they have the full right to decide what it looks like.

But this is not how people today think of the Internet. If you ask people today what the Internet is, they imagine it as a unitary thing that is available to people world-wide, and it looks the same to all people everywhere. The Internet is a space of freedom of access, freedom of information and freedom of expression. It's extremely important to understand that this Internet of freedoms is completely incompatible with the Internet as a service idea. You cannot have a free Internet and at the same time an Internet that is a commercially-selected subset of Internet that works best in the business context of your local cable company.

An Internet-as-a-service is an Internet where the ISP is the socialist government, dictating for you, what the cyber world gets to look like. This is the consequential Kavanaugh Internet: you may think of it as an Internet born from constitutional freedoms, but an Internet born from freedoms is decidedly un-free.

Once we realize that, it's up to us to decide what we want to do. Do we want to throw our hands in the air and see what kind of Internet market forces will create for us (note: it will be different depending on what state you live in)? Or do we want an Internet that mirrors our current perception of an Internet of freedoms? If we want the latter, the only way to get an Internet of freedoms is by writing it into law. Regulation that states exactly what those freedoms are, and tells the gatekeepers that they need to provide us with at-minimum a version of Internet where those freedoms are respected.

A lot of people think it makes no sense that regulation creates freedom, and a lack of regulation creates oppression. But this is precisely how things work in the real world. You cannot be free without legislation that tells you what your freedoms are. What do you think the constitution is? It is the supreme regulation of your personal freedoms. What you need is a constitution of the Internet. This is net neutrality.

Net neutrality is the constitution of the free Internet. And it doesn't exist (and neither do your freedoms) unless we create it.

Re:Judges, not legislators

[Noamin]

The proper course of action is to vote with your wallet and take your business elsewhere. Don't act like you can't; it's a rare case these days where you have no choice of ISP's.

While most of your post is just deranged gibbering, this is actually an outright lie. The vast majority of US homes do not have a choice of ISPs. Of course, it's no surprise that someone whose sig contains whining about "offended feelings" has no interest in facts or reality.

Re:Judges, not legislators

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

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.

If ISPs are common carriers then Title II applies and network neutrality is valid based on existing law. The internet, at its heart is take a packet from arbitrary source to arbitrary definition. That sounds like a common carrier to me. Title II has been around since 1964.

Ultimately it would be nice if the congress people would do their fucking jobs and officially classify it as title II so there is no room for interpretation, but they have not, since they foolishly believe that trusting corporations to do the right thing if we just give them unfettered power works. It doesn't.

Also ISPs have a ton of benefit from public easements and infrastructure to build their crap. That changes the game considerably. You can't blatantly use a public resource purely for enrichment with no consideration for the public good. This also isn't a chance where free market fairy dust fixes everything. A lot of places only have one hard line isp, and many still have none. Here is a link showing it. link.

An estimated 34.4 million people don't have access to broadband in America.

The interesting thing is conservatives tend to have flexible ethics. He says he is a strict follower of the law, but it takes a tortured interpretation to have our packet delivery network to not be a common carrier.

Now you could argue that if they ban net neutrality and such and ISPs run amuck making the internet their private toll roads, well maybe it will no longer be a common carrier, but that would be no different than saying only Walmart can use semi trucks on the highway. The original intent of the internet was as a common carrier. Interpretation of statutes should be based on that original intent, and not the intent of people wanting to make even more money by setting up more toll booths.

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:Judges, not legislators

[l0n3s0m3phr34k]

I really dislike that whole argument of "find that in the Constitution", as if a document written over 200 years ago has every future technology, invention, social change, etc written in it. I've heard the same argument about the EPA, Department of Education, the IRS, etc. By that logic, we should disband the Air Force and the Marines, since the Constitution only mentions the Army and Navy. It doesn't mention electricity at all, or have any comprehension of ideas like nuclear weapons, so therefor the government shouldn't regulate those either, right? We should just return to an 18th century agrarian society, abandon any law having anything to do with anything not specifically listed in the Constitution. If one State doesn't like another State dumping toxic waste into a river right on their border, I suppose they should just call up their State militia and fight it out. States should be able to enact tariffs and embargoes between each other, succeed from the Union without federal interference, determine their own voting laws for any political positions inside their own State, etc. If it's not specifically in the Constitution, it's good to go!

Re: Judges, not legislators

[Pinky's Brain]

Granted.

Any records of your visits to the deposit/PO boxes however are almost certainly not covered, aka metadata, given United States v Miller 1976.

Re: Judges, not legislators

[Anonymous Coward]

Disputes between states are settled in Federal courts; that's actually in the Constitution. The Constitution also states that the federal government is responsible for Common Defense. From the hyperbole you justed spewed, it's clear that not only have you never actually read the Constitution, but your entire scope of knowledge regarding the documents is flat-out wrong.

Re: Judges, not legislators

[DarkMagician07]

Funny, I live in a fairly populated county. I have 2 choices and one of those is >5 Mbps.

Until there is a choice in who I get to use as my provider, then the company providing service has no right determining what I can and cannot see. If they can, then they are most definitely no longer a provider of the internet and are no better than AOL was back in the early 1990's.

Re:Judges, not legislators

[gravewax]

I'm not sure why this is so hard for people to understand - judges don't (and shouldn't) make the laws. They only attempt to interpret them as cases are brought before them where a violation is claimed.

Want different laws? Elect different legislators.

but a judges political, ideological and religious leanings directly affect their interpretations of those laws. These are also lifelong positions which may have huge ramifications for years if not decades to come. it is pure ignorance to think the laws start and end with the legislators.

Re:Judges, not legislators

[Powercntrl]

The proper course of action is to vote with your wallet and take your business elsewhere. Don't act like you can't; it's a rare case these days where you have no choice of ISP's.

This may work for search engines, social media sites, and gay wedding cake bakers, but some of us legitimately have no choice of broadband providers.

I don't live out in BFE, either. I'm in central Florida (the 3rd most populated state in the USA). The choice in my neighborhood is Spectrum broadband, or nothing. AT&T used to offer DSL, but it is not available to new customers and they have no plans to ever offer any form of broadband services for new customers in my neighborhood.

Re:Judges, not legislators

[Maxwell'sSilverLART]

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.

You are more correct than you realize.

When SCOTUS is sitting in appellate jurisdiction--as is nearly always the case--it's not there to hear the facts of the case. Facts are developed and judged at the trial level. Appellate courts don't judge facts, they judge law: was the evidence properly admitted/suppressed under the Rules of Evidence and relevant caselaw? Were there procedural errors in the handling of the case? Is there a constitutional issue making a statute invalid, or making an interpretation invalid? Was a statute used in a manner contrary to previous use without a good reason for the divergence from established jurisprudence?

The appellate court judges are experts on the law; it's not up to them to decide the accuracy and weight of the facts, just to decide whether the trial court followed the established law in getting to the result it reached. If you read most appellate court decisions, they rarely change the outcome of the trial court outright, but rather remand the case to the lower court with instructions to hold further proceedings "consistent with this ruling." That is, "y'all messed up on these points, go try again and get those bits right this time." It's not unheard of for the trial court to have new proceedings, make the procedural changes required by the higher court, and still reach the same result.

Re:Judges, not legislators

[Powercntrl]

Here is a study (skip to page 11) that estimates that over 50% of US households have 2 or more choices for 25mbps+ landline service.

Typical Republican mindset: "I've got mine, too damn bad if you didn't get yours."

Selfish people with no empathy are ruining this country. Nobody should have to move just to have a choice of broadband provider. Certainly not half of the country.

Re:Judges, not legislators

[meglon]

Section 8

3: To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;

18: To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.

Re:Judges, not legislators

[LynnwoodRooster]

Deciding if a given law is legal or not is radically different than creating a new law out of the ether. Judicial activism is literally the latter - inventing new "rights" and "regulations" where none exist.

Re:Judges, not legislators

[diamondmagic]

From US Code Title 1 Chapter 1 Section 1:

words importing the singular include and apply to several persons, parties, or things;
words importing the plural include the singular; ...
the words “person” and “whoever” include corporations, companies, associations, firms, partnerships, societies, and joint stock companies, as well as individuals;

It's literally spelled out for you at the very first paragraph of the entire US Code. You don't even have to flip past the first page.

Re:Judges, not legislators

[mcl630]

I'm not sure why this is so hard for people to understand - judges don't (and shouldn't) make the laws. They only attempt to interpret them as cases are brought before them where a violation is claimed.

Want different laws? Elect different legislators.

You miss the point entirely... his intepretations of the law in these two cases are completely ridiculous and unrealistic, no sane person would come to those conclusions... the problem is his interpretations, not the laws themselves.

Re:Judges, not legislators

[shanen]

Why was that AC tripe moderated into visibility. And "insightful", too? In a flying pig's eye. Or rather in the eyes of a herd of flying sock puppets with mod points to burn. There is a substantive reply, but NOT for AC.

Re:Judges, not legislators

[dywolf]

Translation:
when judges agree with me: good decision
when they don't: ACTIVIST JUDGES MAKING LAWS!

Re: Judges, not legislators

[Anonymous Coward]

50%?!? You are telling me it is too difficult and not enough to go around to provide more than 1 out of every 2 individuals a second ISP... in the US?!?

Re:Judges, not legislators

[dywolf]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:Judges, not legislators

[fafalone]

I wasn't aware the US Code was part of the US Constitution.

Re:Judges, not legislators

[Wrath0fb0b]

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.

This is quite silly. The Constitution undoubtedly gives Congress the right to regulate ISPs that are engaging in interstate commerce. Congress could pass a law mandating Net Neutrality and directing an appropriate agency (likely the FCC) to draft rules to enforce it. Congress could also pass a law specifically saying that no agency has the authority to create such a rule.

Guess what. Congress did fucking neither. That's all we needed, a simple up or down from the one body that has final goddamned authority. Instead, they remained silent and so we have to parse the content of laws from previous decades instead of having a clear and concise national policy from a legislative body that's suppose to make policy.

The anger at judges and lawyers and agencies is valid but misplaced. The one body that could resolve the issue has gone out to lunch.

Re:Judges, not legislators

[AmiMoJo]

Judicial activism is literally the latter - inventing new "rights" and "regulations" where none exist.

Can you give us an example of that?

Re: Judges, not legislators

[Bing Tsher E]

Is it not odd that like, over ninety percent of Americans agree that at the very deepest level, the most fundamental problem in this country is the supposed two party system

Are you going to back that up with more than an assertion?

Re:Judges, not legislators

[Actually, I do RTFA]

judges don't (and shouldn't) make the laws

Judges do enforce people's (and company's) constitutional rights. And if a judge (say, this one) believes all net neutrality regulations are unconstitutional, then the legislature will have trouble passing such laws.

Re: Judges, not legislators

[Anonymous Coward]

You bring up a good point. Now combine your recorded visits to the safe deposit box, with every toll you hit on the tollway, every location you swipe your credit card, the list of purchased goods from all the stores you visit who keep data on you, and every surveillance camera you pass by, every time your phone records your location, and you can start to see a silhouette of yourself that turns more and more into a painting, then a photograph, then at some point indistinguishable from an FBI van spying on you from down the block.

Re:Judges, not legislators

[LynnwoodRooster]

The justices could simply rule the law unconstitutional because it lacks clarity or specificity. If you cannot understand what the law is to do, then by default it is unconstitutional. So toss the law and force Congress to try again.

Re:Judges, not legislators

[swillden]

The justices could simply rule the law unconstitutional because it lacks clarity or specificity. If you cannot understand what the law is to do, then by default it is unconstitutional. So toss the law and force Congress to try again.

In this case, you could write the clearest and most specific law possible to ensure net neutrality -- and Kavanaugh would rule it an unconstitutional infringement of the free speech of ISPs.

Of course, the ideal solution is competition. Given a choice between an ISP that restricts your choices and one that doesn't, you'll take the latter -- unless the restricted ISP costs a lot less or offers some other compelling advantage. This question only arises because so many consumers have no real choice of ISP.

Re:Judges, not legislators

[AmiMoJo]

Privacy seems to be covered by the 1st, 3rd, 4th and 5th amendments.

What specific privacy protections do you believe were created by judicial activism without constitutional support?

Re:Judges, not legislators

[LynnwoodRooster]

No problem there - a clearly written law that is also unconstitutional should be tossed. But I would argue that a law that cannot be reasonably interpreted without extensive judicial review is implicitly unconstitutional, as its constitutionality cannot be easily divined.

Re: Judges, not legislators

[DaFallus]

Another Anonymous Coward incredulously demanded:

50%?!? You are telling me it is too difficult and not enough to go around to provide more than 1 out of every 2 individuals a second ISP... in the US?!?

Actually, that's pretty much exactly the case. There are still a fair number of U.S. residents who live out in the boonies, where the cost-per-mile for pole space is high and the customer density is low.

At some point, it doesn't pencil out, so you take advantage of government handouts and subsidies to expand your network and then pocket the money and stop building out your network, and folks who live beyond the edge are reduced to crap like satellite internet or cellular data for broadband.

FTFY

Re: Judges, not legislators

[kenh]

'[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."

This isn't your data, it's the carrier's.

The question is whether you have an expectation of privacy, having given that data to a company.

You are using the public phone network, tell me again about your expectation of privacy...

Since phones are effectively required for life in the USA

No, they are not.

you don't have a choice about giving that data, only a choice of which company you give the data to.

So you DO have a choice, choose a provider that doesn't share their customers metadata with the government.

Re: Judges, not legislators

[fortfive]

Except this guy is claiming isp's have a constitutional right to limit traffic, thus making any law that might get enacted to be void on constitutional grounds.

Re:Judges, not legislators

[LynnwoodRooster]

There is no right to privacy in those amendments. Please point to where they are.

Re:Judges, not legislators

[kenh]

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.

Who do you think writes all those amicus briefs for the Supreme Court, and who do you think reads them?

Also, SCOTUS reviews the prior decisions in the case under review, including so-called "expert testimony" submitted in every lower-court case that led to the case arriving at SCOTUS.

Just because attorneys don't call "expert witnesses" when making oral arguments doesn't mean SCOTUS doesn't get input from experts.

Re:Judges, not legislators

[blindseer]

I really dislike that whole argument of "find that in the Constitution", as if a document written over 200 years ago has every future technology, invention, social change, etc written in it.

I really dislike people calling the Constitution a "living document" and forget what makes the document "alive". The Constitution lives in that it can be amended. Saying it "lives" in that it can be reinterpreted to fit the norms of today only says that the words mean nothing. It means what it meant when it was written, that's true. It still means what it meant today, if that means it doesn't fit the norms and needs of today then it should be amended.

I've heard the same argument about the EPA, Department of Education, the IRS, etc. By that logic, we should disband the Air Force and the Marines, since the Constitution only mentions the Army and Navy.

The IRS was a construct of an amendment that allowed for direct taxation of the citizens by the federal government. The EPA should not exist, and neither should the Department of Education, if we interpreted the Constitution as written. A lack of a federal agency to oversee pollution and education does not mean people dump toxins into the water without punishment or that children go uneducated. What it means is that the states manage such things. If the lack of such federal agencies bother you then lobby to amend the Constitution.

When it comes to the US Air Force I can on one hand agree with you that it is outside the Constitution. On the other hand I can see it as merely an extension of the land forces. The US Marine Corps is legally a part of the US Navy and so is constitutionally sound for it to exist. Over time it has evolved into a "separate but equal" (to use the words from POTUS describing a future space force) military force but it's still in many ways an extension of the Navy. Again, if it bothered people enough then I suspect we'd have enough support to amend the constitution to allow the USAF and USMC to exist as is.

It doesn't mention electricity at all, or have any comprehension of ideas like nuclear weapons, so therefor the government shouldn't regulate those either, right?

Correct. The federal government is a construct of the states and therefore only has the authority granted to it. I'd prefer it if the states stood up for its rights and told the federal government to go back to doing only what it was created to do. When it comes to electricity though there is the provision that the federal government is to regulate interstate commerce. When electricity crosses state borders the federal government is involved in making this "regular". When electricity crosses international borders, such as with the wires that cross into Mexico and Canada, the federal government is charged with regulating international trade and treaties with other nations that make that happen. We don't need an amendment for this because the constitution already covers this.

With nuclear weapons the Constitution was quite clear, the federal government was explicitly barred from regulating weapons. Does that mean that uranium can be bought and sold at the corner drug store? Not necessarily, because again the states are empowered to do many things that the federal government is barred from doing. If this is a problem then amend the constitution.

We should just return to an 18th century agrarian society, abandon any law having anything to do with anything not specifically listed in the Constitution.

Right, because unless the government permits it then people are barred from doing it. Except that's not how the federal government works. The federal government was explicitly defined to be very small from the start and to leave many things to the control of the states and to leave people to be free to do as they wish. Let's go back to the USAF. If the people wanted an air force to defend the skies then the people were

Re:Judges, not legislators

[blindseer]

I hate the term "judicial activism" and "legislating from the bench" as that more often than not can simply mean "I don't agree with the opinion".

Just because a right was not spelled out in the Bill of Rights does not mean it does not exist. Do I have the right to hop on one foot? It's not in the Bill of Rights so I guess not. But wait, I believe it is there...

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

Where is my right to hop on one foot? It's there because the federal government was never empowered to prevent me from doing so. Where's my right to privacy? I have the right to privacy because if the government follows the Bill of Rights my right to privacy is preserved. Nearly every sentence in the Bill of Rights preserves some aspect or another of my right to privacy. The Constitution assumes I have some right to privacy, it's there from the government being prevented from quartering troops in my home, to not disarming me, to needing a warrant to look through my pockets.

What rights did the courts "invent"? People seem to forget that the federal government is a construct of the states, and therefore is subordinate to the states. Somehow and at some time we lost "These United States" and became "The United States". The states used to be sovereign nations under a mutually beneficial federation to administrative regions of a national government. What I've been seeing is not the courts creating rights for the people but instead the courts creating powers for the federal government.

Re:Judges, not legislators

[AmiMoJo]

For example, the 4th guarantees the right to privacy of one's papers and domain. The 1st has freedom of assembly, which requires a certain amount of privacy to exist.

Re:Judges, not legislators

[orgelspieler]

Yeah. If we wanted Net Neutrality, we shouldn't have elected Ajit Pai. Oh wait, we didn't.

When it comes to just about anything that has regulations issued by the executive branch, there is some broad and vague law behind it. If the regulated groups squeal, it is up to the courts to decide whether the rule fits within the governing CFR. That's not the same as judges making the law. They're interpreting the law to determine whether the executive branch acted within the authority granted by the legislative branch. That's how checks and balances are supposed to work.

Re:Judges, not legislators

[shaitand]

Yes but the Constitution is the HIGHEST law... nothing congress passes can preempt it. He is a supereme court justice, these opinions aren't consistent with that law.

Re: Judges, not legislators

[tbannist]

Worse than that, he's claimed that ISPs have a constitutional right to limit and censor their customer's access to the Internet because he thinks the Internet is exactly the same thing as TV.

Re: Judges, not legislators

[tbannist]

You are using the public phone network, tell me again about your expectation of privacy...

In what sense is the privately owned phone network a public phone network? Especially since you doubly-emphasized that point.

Re:Judges, not legislators

[Green Mountain Bot]

+1 Fucking Gets It. Not a mod today, but I would up-mod the hell out of this post, AC and all.

Re:Judges, not legislators

[Dragonslicer]

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.

The Internet is just the modern equivalent of post roads.

Re: Judges, not legislators

[luis_a_espinal]

You are using the public phone network, tell me again about your expectation of privacy...

In what sense is the privately owned phone network a public phone network? Especially since you doubly-emphasized that point.

Exactly. We are obviously entitled to privacy (via anti-tapping laws) when conducting a conversation over a public phone network, so I fail to see why we shouldn't expect privacy in other contexts.

This is why I sometimes wish I lived in the EU. For all its structural failings, at least the EU got its shit right when it comes to privacy laws.

Re:Judges, not legislators

[Wrath0fb0b]

What do you mean by "open to an argument"? This is a deeply ambiguous phrase.

I'm sure he would be open to an argument, because it's a judge's job to listen to each party's claims before deciding the case. But that's trivial to the point of meaninglessness.

If you mean, however, that he's been sympathetic to the argument, that's entirely nonsense because no litigant has ever taken that position and so he had no opportunity to even hear that claim. That doesn't make it right or wrong, it just means the issue never came up.

[ And the reason it never came up is that, up till now, the main argument has been about the scope of delegated powers to the FCC and whether their actions comply the APA. ]

Re: Judges, not legislators

[e3m4n]

How is this any different than Facebook deciding what sort of comments they are going to allow? They claim the right to decide that 90% of religious groups are 'hate speech' and ban them constantly while managing to do very little about FBLive live streams of gang rapes and beheadings. Or Youtube's decision to de-monitize every single gun-related channel, even if that content is merely about target shooting, safety, or even proper care and cleaning; despite it being completely legal and constitutionally protected. If Facebook is legally allowed to decide, for themselves, what sort of 'dialog' they want to allow in their GroupThink project, or Youtube decides who they want to punish for not fitting into their views; What right do you have telling another company (ie ATT) what they can or cannot restrict? Maybe we need to expand the 14th amendment, that guarantees equal treatment, to more than just race and gender.

This is the paramount problem with 'Net Neutrality'. They used the word Neutrality but its total bullshit. The net result is they forced carriers to absorb the cost of companies like Netflix. It is literally another example of government setting up a billion dollar empire. They use far-fetched examples of ATT blocking access to Netflix because it competes with HBO. But all they did was allow Netflix to exploit this and reduce their operating costs and saddle that burden on the carriers. There is nothing Neutral about it. If you want real neutrality then everyone gets a bandwidth meter and they pay by the byte, just like electricity. Nobody said it had to be prohibitively expensive, just uniformly metered to every occupant. Any world where ATT is told they cannot restrict the flow of data, or block the flow of data, should apply EQUALLY to content providers of Social Media. Instead of congress telling FB they need to do a better job policing they users, maybe FB needs to say 'you tell ME which users to sanction based on a system of Due Process' to congress and claim Neutrality otherwise. After all, should it not be the courts the decide when and if someone's 1st amendment rights can and should be censored? You can't have a bias'd and untrained bunch of tech flunkies like FB deciding for themselves, without true system of legal court system appeals, who is and who is not entitled to their constitutionally protected rights. Not so long as you believe your right to bandwidth and accessing the internet is beyond the rights of those paying to maintain and provide it to you.

If you want Neutrality then you best be ready to fuck over the content providers equally as much as you fuck over those just delivering said content.

Re:Judges, not legislators

[luis_a_espinal]

The last thing you want is every idiot with box of cat-5 or spool of single mode fiber running amok nailing wires to anything that will hold a nail.

Telecom is a critical infrastructure and is managed by the gov't for the public good.

Bezos, Gates, Zuckerberg and Musk could run gigabit to every house and shanty in the country if they wanted to, like google tried to do.

Appeal to extremes.

Re: Judges, not legislators

[Wrath0fb0b]

Exactly. We are obviously entitled to privacy (via anti-tapping laws) when conducting a conversation over a public phone network, so I fail to see why we shouldn't expect privacy in other contexts.

Except that most of those anti-tapping laws come from Congress as opposed to being mandated by the Fourth Amendment.

In fact, the entire premise of the Stored Communications Act is that Congress passed a law granting more protection[1] to third-party-stored data like emails than the courts had afforded it under the Constitution.

Which is actually supposed to be how shit works. The Constitution is a floor, not a ceiling. It's supposed to represent the absolute bare minimum of rights that can never be taken away, not the maximum extent of protection.

[1] At the same time as enabling those protections, however, the SCA did mandate that third parties turn over the data once the procedural protects kicked in. In effect, it took a system where third parties could voluntarily turn your emails over to the government with no court supervision into a system where it is illegal for the third party to turn your emails over without a court order and mandatory for them to turn it over when the government does have a court order.

That was sort of the 'grand compromise' of the SCA -- increased requirement for the government to go to court combined with increased powers of the court's orders. Not a bad deal, all in all.

Re:Judges, not legislators

[luis_a_espinal]

What do you think the constitution is? It is the supreme regulation of your personal freedoms.

The Constitution is a document that defines the structure and operation of the core elements of the government and the attached Bill of Rights is a RESTRICTION on what the government is allowed to do. The Constitution/Bill of Rights does not grant rights to anyone.

Ugh, it grants rights by virtue of what it enumerates the things the government is forbidden to do when it comes to imposing limits on people.

Re:Judges, not legislators

[strikethree]

A judge interpreting what the law (constitution) tries to say about a distributor (ISP).

Except an ISP is NOT a distributor. Sure, you could say an ISP "distributes" packets, but that is a reductio ad absurdum thing. I counter that the ISP can NOT be classified as a distributor because the ISP does not actually make the initial decision for whether or not packets flow, they merely facilitate the flowing of packets.

Re: Judges, not legislators

[e3m4n]

what the phone company may or may not disclose about your phone records is defined under CPNI legislatively under the 1996 Telecom Act and FCC policy.

https://searchnetworking.techt...

the thing is this MetaData, while I haven't seen the exact info stored, is more obscure. I remember some layman examples of how Project Carnivore worked. Its successor, Project Prism, puts carnivore to shame. From what I recall, even with records that do not specifically say anything at all about you, they can datamine to such a degree that its almost 'Minority Report' level of probability to figure out what actions you will partake in. How likely you are to have an affair based on a brief encounter, what hotel you are most likely to use for your affair even before you know yourself, etc. Using records without your identity tied to it, they can still figure out who you are, after pairing it with other records they sift through in real-time such as the stream of email and social media posts. They track your movements, your daily texts, everything, even without having to look at the content of the traffic itself. Its the real-time, AI, version of a nosy neighbor with a line directly to the cops the second you do something different than your usual routine.

Re:Judges, not legislators

[e3m4n]

SCOTUS judges take cases and in doing so, only apply them to the constitution as written. They cannot consider other federal laws in the process. Only whether this issue violates the constitution. To do so, they not only read the constitution and its amendments, but all articles written by them men who created them. This means extensive historical reads from papers like The Federalist, etc. Because it is important to understand not just the exact wording of the constitution but the author's reasoning behind putting it there in the first place. A perfect example is how people misunderstand the word 'regulated' in the 2nd amendment. It has nothing to do with government 'regulations'. Well Regulated meant kept in proper working order in 1787 and was used throughout the land as such. Today nobody uses the phrase 'well regulated' to mean maintained in proper working order. In order to understand this wording, research into writings by the framers is needed to understand the use of these words, as they have clearly changed in their implied definition over time.

In what way is what a carrier wanting to do with his network that he sells access to unconstitutional in any manner that also does not make the practices of late by FaceBook and Youtube in their fake war on 'fake news' any different? Its the same thing. One restricts sites, one restricts content, two sides of the same fucking coin.

Re:Judges, not legislators

[shaitand]

It enumerates EXAMPLES of things the government is forbidden to do when it comes to imposing limits on people. It specifically states that all other powers are reserved for the people.

Re:Judges, not legislators

[shaitand]

The marines are part of the navy. If you follow the way in which power was distributed by the founders then yes there is obvious guidance. The greater the scope of any empowered entity the more power had to be distributed. That is why a jury of peers has the power to prevent the enforcement of any act of any federal or state government one case at a time, collectively it was intended that the people could override what they felt was an unjust law within their community.

Re: Judges, not legislators

[Pinky's Brain]

But should it be the domain of some unelected and neigh unaccountable bunch of judges to pull law out of the penumbra of the emanations of the constitution to fix flaws exposed by the march of progress? Once you go down that rabbithole, you allow for abuse which will be very hard to fix. Creating law should be the domain of congress in my opinion.

The line between interpreting the constitution and judicial activism isn't solid, but with the invention of a right of privacy I'd still say they have leapfrogged it. You need more judges willing to take a step back.

Re:Judges, not legislators

[shaitand]

The problem with the air force is the Constitution did not empower the federal government to keep a standing land force, to assemble one in time of war yes, but not in time of peace.

Re:Judges, not legislators

[e3m4n]

net neutrality is nothing of the fucking sort. You seem to be OK with Facebook and everyone else using another bullshit, partizan, bias'd organization, The Southern Poverty Law Center, to restrict access and content under the false flag of 'fighting fake news' or 'fighting against hate speech'. NONE of that was ever ONCE considered a violation of NET NEUTRALITY. Is it fucking Neutrality or isn't it? Don't pretend like its OK to restrict SOME kinds of things you happen to disagree with and then cry because ATT *might* keep you from getting to your internet porn sites. Thats EXACTLY how 'Net Neutrality' was fucking implemented. IT means its Neutrality - AS LONG AS WHAT YOU WANT TO SEE AGREES WITH OUR STANDARDS OF HOW YOU SHOULD THINK. If it doesn't, well these rules don't apply so restrict it all you want.

Re:Judges, not legislators

[shaitand]

And juries to have the power to negate them in their communities one case at a time.

Re:Judges, not legislators

[shaitand]

The ISPs are carriers of speech across state lines, as such they are solidly within the scope of the commerce clause. The right to free press, free assembly, free speech, and the freedom to travel between states are ALL negated by what this justice is suggesting, that these carriers can block and even alter speech, press, and commerce in flight across state lines.

Re:Judges, not legislators

[shaitand]

Bingo.

The ISPs are carriers of speech across state lines, as such they are solidly within the scope of the commerce clause. The right to free press, free assembly, free speech, and the freedom to travel between states are ALL negated by what this justice is suggesting, that these carriers can block and even alter speech, press, and commerce in flight across state lines.

Re:Judges, not legislators

[Green Mountain Bot]

Congress DID pass a law allowing the FCC to regulate interstate and international communications (as which ISPs undoubtedly qualify). More than one, in fact.

Re: Judges, not legislators

[e3m4n]

you mean like Facebook and Youtube, deciding for themselves, what content to delete, what accounts to suspend, and what speech to censure with no legal recourse, no oversight, no transparency? That sort of restriction by content? Never once was that in breech of Net Neutrality. How is it conent on the servers I provide considered MY Property to decide what is and what is not acceptable, but the same data as it flows through my switches, routers, and fiber connections NOT considered the same property with the same discretion? This is why Net Neutrality had to go, as written. It was the furthest thing from Neutral, it was a rule, imposed without a law, restricting someone from doing something and yet allowing another company to do the exact same thing, they just happen to be your buddies. Its cronyism. There is a reason why Google logged more whitehouse visits during the Obummer administration than EVERY SINGLE OTHER LOBBYIST combined. They werent fucking talking about golfing all those times. Thats for sure.

http://googletransparencyproje...

So what did we get? We got Google drafting the language of Net Neutrality that makes ATT and other carriers subsidize their costs of running Youtube, while holding Facebook and Youtube EXEMPT from the same principles that the word Neutrality implies.

Re:Judges, not legislators

[lhunath]

Hey you, you seem frustrated. You also seem to be railing against something you clearly take issue with but wasn't in the comment you replied to.

I think you're frustrated with people hijacking the term "net neutrality" as whatever regulation is necessary to protect their own world-view. Did I get that right?

Net neutrality is not about leftist or rightist values. It is not about feminism, porn, fake news, or hate speech.

Net neutrality is nothing more than "my internet is the same internet as your internet".
The idea that the Internet is a domain of its own, and any gatekeeper that provides access to the Internet should treat it as-it-is, and not try to change what the Internet looks like to fit their personal beliefs or commercial interests. Whether that Internet has things on it that I like or dislike does not matter. What matters is that it's the same and stays the same. The ISP should be neutral, not biased. The ISP should show the picture as-is, not color it blue or red, censor it or favor it.

And here's the crux: for an ISP to treat the internet as neutral, you need regulation. If there is no regulation, every ISP will treat the Internet as biassed. Leftist ISPs will treat it leftist, rightist ISPs will treat it rightist and all ISPs will treat it in whatever way makes them more money. If you want your Internet to be the same as my Internet, your Internet speech to be unadulterated and free, you need to tell ISPs everywhere that they are not allowed to censor your speech, they are not allowed to change your Internet to look or act different.

Re:Judges, not legislators

[Green Mountain Bot]

You know what IS in the constitution? This:

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

In other words, it doesn't have to be in the constitution to exist. It's pretty fucking clear, based on the writings of the founders and the other amendments, that this was a right that was assumed to exist at a level so fundamental that the founders didn't even bother to write it in.

Re:Judges, not legislators

[e3m4n]

thats easily fixed by legislating away the ownership of last-mine from the service providers. Right now, excluding less than 0.5% of the markets, you can only get service to your house in 1 of 3 ways.

Through copper phone lines which require access via poles and interconnects owned by the phone company

Through coaxial, which is even more restrictive in access to poles and interconnects owned by the cable company

Through the Air. The only last-mile medium that is 'owned' by the FCC and has more than one player providing some form of service.

As long as the phone companies and cable companies retain the Monopoly on the last-mile, you will almost always be restricted to one or two choices. If those two collude to the same restrictions, pricing models, or any other bullshit, your choices are effectively no different.

Legislate the last-mine interconnects be completely non-affiliated 3rd parties who operate with public service commission oversight and transparency to give all providers equal access to all customers. In this situation capitolism WOULD fix it because you _could_ just switch carriers. Net Neutrality is a fix for a problem only because congress, after the Patriot Act, went out of their way to reduce the number of ISPs in order to make wire taps and warrants easier to manage. They created monopolies who collude with each other to become a Cartel. Take the last-mile away and competition will flourish.

Re: Judges, not legislators

[e3m4n]

so i take it you do not live in the US? Or perhaps live in a dense population? Even in suburbia there are neighborhoods where cable has not yet built infrastructure or the phone company only offers 6Mpbs x 384k DSL. There are even areas where DSL isnt an option because the nearest DSLAM is more than 6000ft of copper from the premises. If your suburb is more than 6000ft from the CO, and the number of units is under 500 in that neighborhood, they will not even bother to install a remote DSLAM and trunk fiber to it. In those cases, they have to wait until Cable rolls out service in their area, their choices are Cable, or pay for a cellular-internet plan and buy a router that does LTE/4G. And we all know what those speeds are really like. Just install the SpeedTest.net app on your mobile device and see how you are lucky to get 2Mbps at times, depending on distance from the tower, etc.

Re: Judges, not legislators

[Rob Y.]

Facebook is not an ISP. Sure, they can control what's on Facebook. But Verizon should not be allowed to control whether you can access Facebook. Is it really so hard to understand that distinction?

Re:Judges, not legislators

[e3m4n]

again you still are not lumping Facebook and Google into the same pool and requiring THEM to be Neutral and so therefore your argument is shit. You cannot pick and choose WHICH corporations have to follow the rules and which ones don't. The minute you do, the whole policy is shit and nothing more than cronyism. Unless you make a law that says NO corporation can decide, for themselves, what content to allow and what content to disallow.

If facebook were discovered to be lumping anything pro LBGT into their censorship of 'hate speech' or 'fake news' the demands for regulation would reach EPIC proportions. But every day they wage war against anything even _remotely_ affiliated with guns or the NRA and I dont hear even a fucking squeek from the hypocrites about neutrality. You could have a page or site that does nothing but talk about how to find old ww2 M1 Garands to restore to good condition, it doesnt matter, you will be flagged, you will get takedown notices, you will get banned for violation of terms.

Until you stop being a hypocrite and decide that Neutrality means Neutral PERIOD, not just sometimes, your going to deal with this shit forever.

In regards to your statement of "This has nothing to do with the Constitution", I think you need to go back to school and pay attention in civics class. The ONLY issues that appear before SCOTUS are ones DIRECTLY about constitutionality. The SCOTUS doesn't decide whats right OR fair, ONLY what is and is NOT a direct violation, or indirectly through principle, a violation of the constitution. With regards to this judge, it has EVERYTHING to do with the constitution. The lower courts are the ones who handle scope OUTSIDE of the constitution. Everything you say is wrong about his stance would make him a poor judge of a lesser court when presiding over net neutrality, but a great judge, should the CONSTITUTIONALITY of a policy or law come into question.

  To be fair, Net Neutrality isnt even a fucking law. It was a wanna-be, side-step congress, rule; implemented by the FCC and the discretion of the LAST Administration. The same latitude the CURRENT administration had to once again change. The likelihood of Net Neutrality _EVER_ appearing before SCOTUS is unlikely. ATT or some other carrier would have to bring a case against the US Gov. The same government that practically handed them a monopoly in exchange for unfettered access to your personal email, internet communication, phone records, etc. Even if they were to strike it down, similar to the way a Travel Ban got stricken down, would not stop an administration from re-wording it to comply with what ever single facet was found in violation. Hence the 3 versions of a travel ban executive order.

Re:Judges, not legislators

[e3m4n]

thats SCOTUS's literal only job. When debating discussion of what a SCOTUS judge would and would not do, 'find that in the constitution' is the ONLY argument. A SCOTUS judge cannot decide that some state law in Hawaii allows it, so lets just keep rolling as it is. Thats not his job.

and we really should disband the Army, the way the constitution SAID we should. The constitution allows for a Navy. An army can only be authorized for 2 years at a time. It was never intended to stand forever. To get around that, we have an Omnibus spending bill every other year that re-authorizes the Army.

The marines are still part of the Navy, says so right on the top of their paycheck.

Perhaps in other discussions 'find that in the constitution' makes less sense. But when discussing a judge and what he may or may not decide in his ruling on a case that will probably NEVER reach his court while service in SCOTUS, its the only argument that really matters. Did what he previously express correctly outline the actual constitutionality of the policy? If so then you cannot say it makes him ineligible. There are many laws on our books that are, in fact, unconstitutional. Until such time they get legally challenged, AND the SCOTUS agrees to hear the case, they will remain on the books, enforced, despite their unconstitutionality.

Re: Judges, not legislators

[bondsbw]

If you want real neutrality then everyone gets a bandwidth meter and they pay by the byte, just like electricity.

ISPs have always been free to offer this kind of system. Predictable billing is just more popular. (Most electric companies provide budget billing for the same purpose.)

just like electricity

So regulated like a utility? Because infrastructural companies tend to have little or no competition in an area due to physical restrictions or other regulations?

Yes, yes, yes... I totally agree with this.

Re:Judges, not legislators

[blindseer]

I agree that is a problem. I'd prefer the Constitution be followed and the Army and Air Force be under the control of the states except in times that Congress has declared war. Alternatively the Constitution could be amended to allow for a standing air defense force and/or land defense force.

In my mind this can only be resolved by the states standing up to the federal government and forcing the federal government to abide by the limits set by the Constitution. I'd like to know how to get the states to grow a backbone.

I'd also like to know how we got this far off the rails. I suspect finding where this went off the rails would reveal how to get back on.

Re: Judges, not legislators

[e3m4n]

blocking content is blocking content. the word Net Neutrality, and its support by the populace is that no provider (not limited to just isp) should have the right to censor or restrict access to what you want to access.

How is saying we are going to censor content on our hard drives any different than saying we are going to censor content on our switches? If Verizon decided to restrict all content related to gay rights, its a violation. But Facebook wouldn't be in violation if they did the exact same thing? The word is NET NEUTRALITY, not ISP Neutrality. Facebook is on the fucking internet isnt it? They provide content don't they? This is why the policy was thrown out in the first place. It was never applied equally and uniformly.

Such policies are always troublesome and eventually always fail. Come up with a policy that applies to every single person and corporation across the board. The same fucking law that some states passed that says a cake baker cannot refuse to make a cake for a gay couple should apply the same way to Facebook, regardless if Facebook is censoring content based on LGBT or gun rights, it shouldn't fucking matter. I have yet to see any state take FB to court for refusing to let people talk about gun rights btw, despite the exact wording of the laws requiring store owners to sell cakes to gay couples being worded in such a way that actual puts FB in violation of the same law. No pun intended but these half-baked laws are bullshit. The reason there is so much polarization in this country right now is exactly for reasons JUST LIKE THIS. We pass laws to punish those we disagree with and do nothing about those we do agree with violating the same spirit of the law. Make laws that will apply to everyone in such a way that NOBODY gets a free pass. 2 things will happen. We will make less damn laws, and people will make sure the laws they DO pass are not unjust as they will have to live by them too.

Re: Judges, not legislators

[iMadeGhostzilla]

Best argument I've heard on the topic. If ISPs are not allowed to control information flow as they see fit to stay in business, neither should be Facebook, Google et al. Google is (in)arguably a greater utility than Netflix.

Re: Judges, not legislators

[e3m4n]

the difference between budget billing and ISP billing is that my Budget plan is based on an average of the last 12 months. If my consumption goes up then next year my budget bill would also go up. At no point am I paying less per month than my lowest consumed month of power. All I am effectively doing is paying more during low consumption months to pre-pay the difference during high consumption months. At no point would my neighbor get my $200/mo electric pricing while continuing to consume $400/mo, every month, worth of electricity. His budget price would have no relationship at all based on MY consumption and MY bill shouldnt go up to subsidize his massive amount of grow lamps or whatever is drinking all that electricity.

Essentially, neutrality, as it once was implemented, did effectively do that to the end consumer. There was tremendous pressure for lower cost but things like 4K content was driving up the cost with no way to individualize this. Per-byte billing would solve this in a way that no carrier would give a shit what content flowed on their network. You want to use 10x the average in usage and stream 4k video all day long, even while nobody is at home, because your dumb ass left the tv running? Here's your bill.

Per-byte billing, even on a budget plan, is unpopular, but it has the strongest chances of neutrality. Yes it should be run similarly to utilities. The last-mile carrier should be independent and provide NOTHING outside of last-mile connectivity, Nor should they have any investments or affiliation with a service provider. This will give you the freedom of picking between several service providers and open the market to more competition. ISPs would then be free to connect to you via said last-mile company and provide you layer3 access to the internet, at which time you pay for the data you consume. Even if an ISP decided it was going to block Netflix (lets say they decided to boycot netflix because the CEO made private donations to a pro-life group, not directly through netflix or its subsidiaries, but just a personal check out of his personal account) you could just pick up the phone and use a different carrier that fast, because of the vast equal access that the independent last-mile carrier allows for.

Re: Judges, not legislators

[whoever57]

So you DO have a choice, choose a provider that doesn't share their customers metadata with the government.

You are living in an alternate USA.

In the real USA, the government insists that all telecom companies provide that metadata on demand, without a warrant. You cannot choose a company that will not "share" that data with the government.

Re: Judges, not legislators

[Sloppy]

How is this any different than Facebook deciding what sort of comments they are going to allow?

People think of websites as expressive media; you don't visit a website just to talk with the other users, but to communicate with the website itself (which happens to include some inputs from some other people). And Facebook does express itself. You'll see their logo, their ads, etc all over that shit. It's formatted however they want it formatted, not however your Usenet newsreader happens to format it.

People think of ISPs and phones as networks where the service is nearly invisible and non-expressive. From this point of view, only the users express themselves; the network is not expressing anything and therefore doesn't have the kinds of rights the 1st Amendment tries to protect. (Additionally, the phone network was uneconomical to build without government help, and has always been connected to government and regulated.)

People might be wrong, about one or both of these things. Or more likely "wrong," in that this is more something the decide/define, rather than discover. It's an ok thing to disagree about and debate, but I hope we all get back onto the same page before too much damage is done. (And everyone used to be on the same page, so this shouldn't be too hard.)

Some of it is historical. Websites, even "web 2.0" with its comments, are seen as their own expressive entities because they always acted like that. Similarly, phones and IP networks are seen as non-expressive carriers because people always experienced them that way. Not only do you expect your phone call to not be edited, but your great grandfather did too, and so did everyone in between! For whatever reason, putting ads in the middle of your phone call wasn't something people thought of in the 1920s. If someone had, we might have a different view of communications networks these days.

But it didn't happen, so it's very rare to hear the opinion that networks could have the right to free expression -- that network traffic is somehow speech for the person delivering it. It hasn't ever been true, has it? A message in a bottle is something the ocean is saying? The US Post is saying the things in your letters or has the right to edit them? Nobody has that interpretation of free speech. Indeed, the public even knows the words "common carrier" without having to understand everything that means. The idea is that mainstream.

Re: Judges, not legislators

[No Longer an AC]

FB is more like a newspaper which exercises editorial content and refuses to publish my letter to the editor.

ISPs are more like letter carriers who would refuse to deliver the paper.

Re:Judges, not legislators

[e3m4n]

Close to right. In theory 'net neutrality' was sold that way. In fact many people believe that is exactly what they got, simply because they never experienced selective traffic shaping or blocking content all together. In reality what we got was a executive _policy_ that forced the carriers to subsidize the cost of content providers, whom themselves were not subject to the _exact_ same policy of neutrality. In _theory_ I am all for the idea of an AGNOSTIC internet. One that will say 'show me a court order to block this shit, otherwise shut the fuck up because I have a business to run'. Instead the government talks out of both sides of their mouth. How does the concept of Net Neutrality (true neutrality) mesh with the same government that expects private industry to be the ones to be responsible for censoring 'terrorist propaganda'. If your job is to be Neutral, then it needs to be someone else's damn job to determine what gets blocked, You cannot expect the same entity to be both neutral and responsible for censorship and filtering. As much as I hate FB, I cannot see anything wrong with them selling ad space to Internet Research Group during the 2016 campaign. Its not their job to interpret what IS or IS NOT, ok. If there isnt already a specific law banning a certain activity, their answer should be 'fuck off.. I sell ad space, they paid for an ad. There was nothing illegal about their ad. Don't like it, change the fucking law to make it illegal. Until then, shut the fuck up and let me get back to my job'. Instead what we get is them being anything BUT neutral now.

See some of my other posts that illustrate that neutrality rules wouldnt even be damn necessary if we didnt turn these companies into monopolies in the first place. Take back the last-mile portion from the providers. Create a network where any company can lease a space, buy a huge pipe to the internet, then pay this last-mile company for a cross-connect to your residence. Every town would have 5 or 6 options where they only have 1 or 2 now.

Net Neutrality became needed because Congress and the FCC legislated monopolies after the patriot act went into effect. It was easier to spy on the whole country via 10 access points than via thousands. So your choices went to shit. The problem with Net Neutrality is it still keeps these assholes in power, still taking your money, still going unpunished financially for how they treat you as a customer. In my scenario there wouldn't need to be a neutrality rule, you simply fire their ass and hire someone else the same way you fire your landscaper when he starts doing a shitty job. How would you feel about having to pay the same SOB to cut your grass regardless of how rude he was, and your only caveat was that a new rule required him to at least cut your grass within a certain parameter of acceptable. I would prefer firing his ass and hiring a new landscaper. Current last-mile circumstances (ie getting from the service provider to your house) would be the same as only 2 landscape companies in your town with thousands wanting to be landscapers, but only these 2 hold a license to even buy lawn mowing equipment.

Re:Judges, not legislators

[TomGreenhaw]

Want different legislators, appoint different judges.

In our imperfect world, judges can and commonly do legislate from the bench through interpreting laws as they see fit.

The world might be a much different place if one different vote on the supreme court forced a statewide recount in Florida - remember the hanging chads? Al Gore would have been president - not George W. Bush. We probably would not have invaded Iraq. We probably would have reigned in the mortgage backed securities that caused the crash in 2008. So much would be different

I'm sure we would have had different problems, but to say that judges don't interpret the law to wield political power is naive. I wish it weren't so, but there it is.

Re:Judges, not legislators

[lhunath]

We largely agree on the bigger picture. Though I personally have a little less faith in the power of market forces to keep the Internet neutral. Even if you break up the monopolies and give people choices, "firing" your ISP simply isn't all that powerful a statement as you would like it to be.

I'm all for sending my ISP a message if I hate what he's doing, and if taking my money elsewhere hurts him as much as you say it would, that would be awesome, but I simply don't think that it does. And that's mainly because 90% of people are sheep, and companies have gotten incredibly good at feeding the sheep pacification drugs. Most people will take almost any abuse you throw at them and still fake a smile if it'll get them more happy drugs (read: tv, sports, porn, whatever).

That's why I'm in the camp of, "you can't rely on market forces to keep these bastards honest, you need to write down what honesty means and then hold them to it".

Re:Judges, not legislators

[Wrath0fb0b]

Well, a lot of judges that have looked into the issue for many hours have disagreed with that. The question went back and forth to the DC Circuit 3 or 4 times and was about to go en banc when the Trump FCC started backtracking on it.

But in any event, what harm could it do to for Congress to reiterate it in plain and unambiguous language so clear than that even the most diehard supporter/opponent of NN would have to concede controls.

That is to say, taking notice of the fact that there is a non-frivolous lawsuit on the question of "does the FCC have authority to do X" (esp: if the lawsuit has been bouncing around a while), Congress might jump in and say "Yes definitely X" or "No, definitely !X" if for no other reason than being assured of having their intent control the outcome.

Re:Judges, not legislators

[Talderas]

The specific grant of power to Congress with regard to armies is

To raise and support armies, but no appropriation of money to that use shall be for a longer term than two years;

The primary reason for the grant of power is to provide for defense of the country and the justification for limiting the appropriations is to prevent a power buildup in the army to avoid the army curtailing individual liberty.

Federalist No. 26 provides some potential insight into this grant of power.

The legislature of the United States will be OBLIGED, by this provision, once at least in every two years, to deliberate upon the propriety of keeping a military force on foot; to come to a new resolution on the point; and to declare their sense of the matter, by a formal vote in the face of their constituents. They are not AT LIBERTY to vest in the executive department permanent funds for the support of an army, if they were even incautious enough to be willing to repose in it so improper a confidence.

This line alone shows that Hamilton was suggesting that a permanent standing army was acceptable primarily because Congress would have the opportunity to curtail its power ever two years by voting on the military.

Schemes to subvert the liberties of a great community REQUIRE TIME to mature them for execution. An army, so large as seriously to menace those liberties, could only be formed by progressive augmentations; which would suppose, not merely a temporary combination between the legislature and executive, but a continued conspiracy for a series of time. Is it probable that such a combination would exist at all? Is it probable that it would be persevered in, and transmitted along through all the successive variations in a representative body, which biennial elections would naturally produce in both houses? Is it presumable, that every man, the instant he took his seat in the national Senate or House of Representatives, would commence a traitor to his constituents and to his country? Can it be supposed that there would not be found one man, discerning enough to detect so atrocious a conspiracy, or bold or honest enough to apprise his constituents of their danger? If such presumptions can fairly be made, there ought at once to be an end of all delegated authority. The people should resolve to recall all the powers they have heretofore parted with out of their own hands, and to divide themselves into as many States as there are counties, in order that they may be able to manage their own concerns in person.

Here we see that Hamilton is writing that the standing army becoming a threat to individual liberty can only occur if successive generations of members elected to the House of Representatives (by the people) agree to continually increase the funding of the military to the point of oppression and he argues that because of this the justification is thus present that the representatives, having acting unfaithfully with regard to the electorate, have given the people justification to dissolve the United States and to form each county as its own independent nation (I believe States in this regard is referring to nations and not states of the United States).

https://www.congress.gov/resou...

Re:Judges, not legislators

[Talderas]

I suggest you read Federalist No. 26. It provides insight regarding the intent of the 2 year spending authorization for armies.

Re: Judges, not legislators

[luis_a_espinal]

Reserved for the states.

FTFY

None of those powers can implement restrictions on people that the Federal government is forbidden to do. That is, the "shall not pass any laws, etc, etc" is transitive from the federal all the way to the local.

Re: Judges, not legislators

[bondsbw]

Ah, I see. You like net neutrality. You just think it should be charged by usage.

I'm failing to see your real argument since ISPs can charge by usage, and nothing about net neutrality changed that.

Re:Judges, not legislators

[fafalone]

You really can't understand the distinction between an ISP and a website? Yes you absolutely can pick and choose which regulations apply to which services. If Facebook started rolling fiber and became an ISP, then yes they should have to follow regulations on ISPs. Facebook doesn't have even remotely the level of monopoly ISPs do. Under your asinine theory, we couldn't even regulate telephone monopolies.
For what it's worth, I am actually upset about Facebook censoring posts about guns, but since I'm not a dishonest weasel, I'm not calling them an ISP or saying there's no difference between ISPs and websites or claiming their have equivalent market dominance.
And again, this judge thinks it's a constitutional issue, but it's simply not, unless you're dishonest or don't understand things; you've manged to span both.

Re: Judges, not legislators

[Rob Y.]

Censorship and 'transmission neutrality' are still different things. Yes, theoretically, without net neutrality, your ISP could censor content (assuming the connection was not encrypted so the ISP could actually see it). But that's not what net neutrality is about. Net neutrality requires that you are free to access whatever content you want and that is available on the web. That doesn't mean you're free to post whatever you want wherever you want - or that websites are required to post any particular information. And it also means that Facebook is free to determine whether they think an article is true before allowing you to link to it on their platform. There's good and bad to that - but just because you don't like some aspect of it doesn't mean that it falls under the category of net neutrality.

Actually, I kind of hope Kavinaugh is stupid or ignorant enough not to get that distinction. Then maybe he's willing to be educated about what net neutrality actually means before he ultimately rules on it. Doubtful, of course, since he's obviously of the phony 'originalist' bent - which essentially means "decide which side of an issue business is on and tie yourself in knots to justify voting that way". The only thing 'originalist' about that is that it's a handy justification that covers a lot of cases without too much knot-tying.

Re: Judges, not legislators

[jittles]

This isn't your data, it's the carrier's.

The carrier does not need my lat/long stored to provide service. They need it only at the time of use. The recording of my position is not required for them to bill. However, I have no choice but to have a cell phone in order to function in society. They should not have the right to store my location data to being with.

You are using the public phone network, tell me again about your expectation of privacy...

Oh it’s a public phone network now? So anyone can start a cellular phone service on this network? No. It is PUBLIC spectrum, but the network itself is private. As a condition of using the public spectrum for a PRIVATE network, the government ought to protect the rights of its citizens to privacy.

Since phones are effectively required for life in the USA

No, they are not.

Unless you’re Ted Kazinski living entirely off the grid on land you do not own, how exactly do you function in modern society without a phone? Your employer is 100% okay with having no way to reach you in an emergency? Your children are allowed to be enrolled in school without providing an emergency contact number? The DMV will issue you a drivers license without having a phone number to contact you with? Sure you could lie about all of these things, but that would cause nothing but trouble if any of those organizations ever tried to use your contact info.

you don't have a choice about giving that data, only a choice of which company you give the data to.

So you DO have a choice, choose a provider that doesn't share their customers metadata with the government.

If cellular phone networks were actually PUBLIC like you claim, such a company would exist. But they’re private companies with such a high barrier to entry that it is almost impossible for anyone to compete with them. There are only 4 nationwide networks in the US.

Re:Judges, not legislators

[datavirtue]

I came here to say that I was glad he will not have a say.

Re: Judges, not legislators

[datavirtue]

They shouldn't but I see the point others are trying to make. Unless it is legislated to be a right of the people then ISPs can do what they want.

Re: Judges, not legislators

[Areyoukiddingme]

This is the paramount problem with 'Net Neutrality'. They used the word Neutrality but its total bullshit. The net result is they forced carriers to absorb the cost of companies like Netflix.

Nobody "forced" the carriers to do anything. It's called "meeting customer demand", also called "running a successful business." Customers wanted more bandwidth. They were willing to pay for more bandwidth. The carriers offered more bandwidth. Customers paid the carriers for more bandwidth. This happened repeatedly, until there was enough bandwidth being paid for by customers that Netflix became a viable business.

And now, suddenly, ISPs think that isn't enough. That they should have the right to fuck with everybody, including you, to demand fees on top of fees on top of fees for a service they're already being paid for, because quarterly profits must continue to rise, no matter what, and not because the service will be better or, in fact, meet customer needs.

If you want real neutrality then everyone gets a bandwidth meter and they pay by the byte, just like electricity.

Bullshit. And no. Bandwidth is not "just like electricity." Bandwidth is nothing like electricity. Bandwidth is nothing like water. Bandwidth is the availability of some maximum data rate, and it costs the same to provide it empty as it does to provide it full. The number of bytes transmitted is totally irrelevant to the cost of providing the service. Therefore metering by the byte is nothing but a money-grab, and an incredibly greedy one at that.

If you want Neutrality then you best be ready to fuck over the content providers equally as much as you fuck over those just delivering said content.

Being neutral is not "fucking over" ISPs you asshole. It's forcing them to continue to behave the way they used to behave since the inception of the public Internet, before they decided they somehow deserved more money for doing the same fucking thing they've been doing this entire time, which is and always has been fabulously profitable. Forcing them, by the way, because if they get to do whatever the fuck they, want, they break the Internet. And fuck that, fuck them, and fuck you. The Internet is the most powerful, most useful, most effective communication mechanism ever devised, but only if it continues to be neutral.

And those pieces of shit at AT&T owe me and every other American $200 billion in back taxes for failing to meet their build-out commitments, which were and are enshrined in LAW.

Re: Judges, not legislators

[datavirtue]

Rome was making tons of laws as it was falling. We are doing the same thing. In several hundred years someone will use hate and whataboutisms to take power in an attempt to establish the 2nd Riech of America. It will be glorious.

Re: Judges, not legislators

[datavirtue]

If I was appointed a justice I would just recuse myself from every case. No controversy, plenty of profit.

Re: Judges, not legislators

[datavirtue]

It will never work. Consumers have a massive amount of power when their outrage is focused, especially when dealing in regulated industries. We expect to have unlimited super high speed internet for $50 a month and by fuck we WILL have it. We are in the age of voting yourself property and wealth. The average person who is going to matter in the next twenty years views internet as a fundamental human right.

Re: Judges, not legislators

[datavirtue]

I doubt that these metaphors are helping people understand this issue. They are good for getting people to think they understand after they hear your argument though.

Re: Judges, not legislators

[datavirtue]

I tried not having a phone before. It was wonderful. My boss gave me a harsh look and said "Get a phone."

You must have a phone to live in the US and participate in society. Will I live in the woods without a phone one day? Yes. At that point I will not give one fuck who the government is (Chinese, American, Canadian), what is on TV, who is running for office. Checked the fuck out.

Society can not and will not function in that state. The expectations of a citizen demand they all have access to communications. It is clear that includes the internet as was once (and still is) true of a phone. Access to the internet is a fundamental human right required to promote self-determination on a large scale.

Re:Judges, not legislators

[LynnwoodRooster]

Does the 4th guarantee privacy of action? And the freedom of assembly is inherently a public thing - you cannot assemble a few hundred people "in secret". You do not have the right to not be observed as you move about on public ways.

Re:Judges, not legislators

[LynnwoodRooster]

Those rights are reserved to the States and the People, respectively. Any Federal action on those rights is simply unconstitutional. The powers of the Federal Government are extremely limited and clear; it is Judicial fiat that has egregiously expanded the scope of Federal interference.

Re:Judges, not legislators

[LynnwoodRooster]

The right to "human dignity" is another invention, in this case by Justice Kennedy. Tell me - what actions do you consider undignified? If you believe lack of access to bacon tramples on your dignity, then does the halal restaurant down the street violate your rights?

Re:Judges, not legislators

[Qzukk]

Net Neutrality became needed because Congress and the FCC legislated monopolies after the patriot act went into effect. It was easier to spy on the whole country via 10 access points than via thousands. So your choices went to shit.

Except that they didn't "legislate" monopolies, they repealed the regulation that was previously forcing phone companies to wholesale connections to competitors. By removing that regulation in 2005, the FCC allowed the phone companies to shut down every competitor that did not have the billions (Google Fiber spent one billion dollars in Kansas City alone) of dollars required to install their own networks. Did they do it for the NSA? Did they do it because they're Republicans and deregulation is always good? Did they do it to play fair since cable companies didn't have to resell their networks? Did they do it because AT&T promised to hire them all as consultants? I don't have an answer to that, but the government did not create this problem anymore than the government is responsible for you hitting yourself in the face with a hammer since they didn't pass a law to stop you.

Re: Judges, not legislators

[jd]

You can choose not to use Facebook. Most areas have a no-compete agreement between ISPs that mean you get a choice of one. To switch ISP, you must sell your house, resign from your place of work and disrupt your children's education. And the new ISP can then do the same.

Facebook is liable for content, ISPs are not.

Re: Judges, not legislators

[Pinky's Brain]

Maybe it's supposed to, but it clearly isn't. The only concept of metadata they had when it was written was what was written on the outside of a letter, recording and search of which has historically also not been a 4th amendment violation.

Metadata searches weren't on their minds when it was written, they worried about search of physical property. Not the invasion of privacy from total surveillance, nor how mass communication would make organizing internal attacks on the nation so much easier. How they would have ruled is anyone's guess ... well except the SC justices which pulled the right to privacy out of their asses, guess they got out their Ouija boards.

If you want privacy rights, get congress to create law.

Re:Judges, not legislators

[Green Mountain Bot]

No, the ninth amendment says nothing about the states. It says exactly what I posted - which is to say that the rights need not be enumerated in the constitution to exist.

Re: Judges, not legislators

[kkoning]

> How is saying we are going to censor content on our hard drives any different than saying we are going to censor content on our switches?

Because there's generally only one party that controls the packet switches that serve households, whereas there are many different companies providing information services, even if there is some concentration there, too.

If you don't like censorship on Reddit, you can use 4chan instead, or Voat, or etc... In most of the country, you have one choice for high-speed broadband--maybe two if you live close enough for DSL to be competitive with cable modems. Replacing or adding to these competitors is EXTREMELY difficult in most places, because of the way that costs scale when putting wires on poles or in the ground. We put more restrictions on ISPs because they have control of "bottleneck" facilities.

Re:Judges, not legislators

[diamondmagic]

Does that make it less of a law?

Should the government prohibit you from making a movie? Should the government be allowed to block a movie from showing in theaters? Because that's what the government was trying to do, block a movie critical of Hillary Clinton, and that's what Citizens United helped overturn.

The First Amendment is pretty clear: There shall be "no law abridging the freedom of speech."

When the US code defines the term "person" and "whoever", they're saying the laws apply to corporations too. Do you want corporations to be unaccountable to the law?

Re:Judges, not legislators

[dfghjk]

what complete horse*t.

The "Constitution" is not the only source of law. This isn't a problem with "wanting an "activist judiciary." No one is claiming they personally "have the right" to face an ISP to "work a certain way". A free market isn't the solution to every problem nor is the ISP market a free one. It is not remotely rare that people don't have a choice in ISPs, and when they do it's absurd to think that they will have choices that "work a certain way". Yes, it would be outrageous for the government to censor, but that doesn't mean they can't enforce the opposite, and yes, we can have one without the other and none of this remotely suggests that the government control content as an alternative.

I would suggest that freedom looks like dumb@sses like you posting tripe like this.

Re:Judges, not legislators

[chispito]

Here is a study (skip to page 11) that estimates that over 50% of US households have 2 or more choices for 25mbps+ landline service.

Typical Republican mindset: "I've got mine, too damn bad if you didn't get yours."

Selfish people with no empathy are ruining this country. Nobody should have to move just to have a choice of broadband provider. Certainly not half of the country.

You really tore into that straw man with a gusto.

Re: Judges, not legislators

[Bert64]

They know your location when you use a fixed line too...

Most organisations will settle for having a physical address to contact you...

Re: Judges, not legislators

[tbannist]

How is this any different than Facebook deciding what sort of comments they are going to allow?

Well that's a big question to answer, and there are multiple reasons why it's different. It is different both in amount and kind. Let's play the analogy game. In this analogy, I'm going to pretend the Internet is a big city and that I am a visitor to the city.

With Net Neutrality, I am allowed to go anywhere I want in the city, I can talk to anyone I want (assuming they want to talk to me), I can go into the Amazon building and buy books, I can got the Facebook building a post stuff on my personal bulletin board, I can go the Netflix building and watch movies.

Without Net Neutrality, I can in theory go anywhere I want in the city, but as soon as leave my gateway into the city, there's a pair of security guards following me around all the time. If those guards decide they don't want me to talk to someone, then I'm not allowed to talk to them. If they decide I can't go to a building, then I'm not allowed to go there. If they decide that HBO is better than Netflix then I may not be allowed into the Netflix building, or they might charge me additional money to go there, or they might simply keep telling me I'm going the wrong way and prevent my from ever finding the building. Furthermore, if I pick up anything in the city, they reserve the right to search my bags and confiscate anything they think that I should not be allowed to have, no matter whether it was free or something I paid for. If they don't want me to have it, I don't get to keep it.

Which of these scenarios sounds more free to you? I think the first scenario is far better for me, because by restricting the right of the gateway to force me to take their nosy, busybody, meddling guards, I seem to have a lot more freedom. I'm not dependent on the good behaviour of guards who have repeatedly proven themselves to be completely untrustworthy. Now, maybe the guards do nothing at all or maybe they shake me down for money at every opportunity. It doesn't matter, I don't want them following me around if they're good and I really don't want them following me around if they're bad. They can potentially interfering with everything I do and really what I do in the city in none of their god damn business. I paid them for access to the city, I don't care if they think they can make more money selling limitations on what I'm allowed to do in the city.

{Petty complaints about Youtube and Facebook deleted}

In the city, if I don't like the rules at the Facebook building, I can go to the MySpace building or to the LiveJournal building or to the Reddit building or to the Slashdot building, or to any other building that I think will suit me. There are lots of alternatives. However, if I don't like the guards that the gateway is forcing on me, I have 4 choices. However, 3 of those choices are essentially the same gateway. The actual gateway owner can dictate the guards behaviour for all 3 companies. So I really only have 2 choices, and in my area both of those choices own TV networks and streaming services. They have really good reasons to not wanting me to go to the Netflix building because Netflix is undercutting their TV prices by around 90%. So I have no reason to believe that any of my options will be good.

This is the paramount problem with 'Net Neutrality'. They used the word Neutrality but its total bullshit.

No, I think you don't understand what Net Neutrality is. It's a common complaint of people who don't understand networks and routing that they don't understand why it's "neutral". I've helped manage an ISP (finance, support software tools, network configuration, data center design and construction, I had my hand in pretty much every aspect of the business), so I have a bit of knowledge about how ISP connections, finance, and networking work.

The net result is they forced carriers to absorb the co

He likes the color blue, too

[Jhon]

I hate the color blue! If he can't prefer the color green over blue he shouldn't be be a justice!

Because it really doesn't MATTER on topics which don't really APPLY the the supreme court. Get your congress-critters two write law well and it'll survive any decision from SCOTUS.

Re:He likes the color blue, too

[rtb61]

Most definitely not true in the case of the US supreme court, which is wildly corrupt, making interpretation of law based upon what they believed, the people who wrote the law, intended, rather than a strictly legal interpretation of what was actually written based upon the accepted legal language.

That corrupt interpretation ie their belief of other beliefs, means they can corruptly make anything legal and anything illegal. Properly done, they should only literally interpret the wording of the law and absolutely nothing else. If this creates a problem for government, then they should rewrite the law to correct the issue.

This turns those judges into politicians and they are most definitely no longer high court judges who rule on the legal literal interpretation of the law, just corrupt ideologues and political appointees, designed as the last hold out of the corrupt, when the law comes for them ie no matter how illegal, the corrupt high court will rule it legal, look no further that dollars trump votes ruling.

The US high court is straight up politically tainted corrupt shite, just accept that reality and fucking fix it.

Re:He likes the color blue, too

[William Baric]

People tend to believe what they want to believe. So by creating laws which are subject to interpretation, people interpret those laws according to what they want to believe, which makes them believe it's a good law, and they'll end up supporting (voting for) politicians creating those laws.

Re:He likes the color blue, too

[Known Nutter]

Because it really doesn't MATTER on topics which don't really APPLY the the supreme court. Get your congress-critters two write law well and it'll survive any decision from SCOTUS.

Well, it sort of does matter. Here you have a SCOTUS Justice nominee who arguably has an established agenda. He believes that POTUS (any) should be immune from criminal investigation, yet he was on the team investigating Clinton during the Lewinsky affair. He spent five years working for the directly for the Bush administration And now, with RvW back, you have now a justice who, along with the rest of the Court, will effectively make the law of the land by overturning a previous SCOTUS ruling.

Which isn't surprising. That's how our government works these days. Flip flop, back and forth, party to party. Wait 2 - 4 years and do something else. And if you can't do that, just be a party of oppositionists and obstructionists until the other side is beaten into submission. Rinse, repeat. This is both sides of the aisle.

No matter your political slant, this guy doesn't represent well the impartiality one would hope for from a sitting judge.

Re:He likes the color blue, too

[Actually, I do RTFA]

Well, since he believes Net Neutrality legislation is unconstitutional, he'll vote to overturn it.

Re:He likes the color blue, too

[shaitand]

The constitution wasn't written in accepted legal language, it was written in common english. It is, and always was, intended to be possible to read and understand by every literate man.

the real problem

[phantomfive]

The real problem is that there are only one or two internet providers in many places, and network neutrality is only one symptom of that problem. You also have price gouging, slow speeds, etc. The solution is to allow competition, and there are places in America where internet is perfectly fine, but not in Silicon Valley.

Re:the real problem

[sit1963nz]

Well in New Zealand I have access to 26 different ISPs, Fibre goes in next week and I can have 900/400 unlimited, no traffic shaping, no port blocking, ie true net neutrality for US$68 / month.

This is what happens when you keep big business out of government and you have a government by the people for the people.

You guys should try democracy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:the real problem

[WindowsStar]

In states like Colorado, Utah, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas, out side a big city there are typically only one ISP that is it. They charge whatever they want and block everything they feel people should not see. These places have the worst internet and the highest prices. One place I went (to be unnamed) the person was paying $300 a month for 2Mb and sites like Starbucks, Amazon and Walmart were blocked because the ISP board has a issues with these sites so the end-user suffers. Completely out of control. We need to force the ISPs to NOT block anything and provide pricing that is an average nation-wide for same speeds and medium.

Re:the real problem

[Maxwell'sSilverLART]

I'm familiar with at least two satellite providers, so unless you're in some very rugged terrain, your "only one ISP" claim is false on its face.

Re:the real problem

[h33t l4x0r]

You don't have to rub it in.

Re:the real problem

[Powercntrl]

The solution is to allow competition

The problem is that it's expensive beyond belief to start an ISP, and you pretty much only get customers by luring them away from a competitor. From the perspective of an investor looking to turn his huge wad of cash into an even bigger wad of cash, starting an ISP is an exceedingly bad investment.

Re:the real problem

[Anonymous Coward]

First of all, area does not grow exponentially (hint: square meter). Secondly, even in high density population area, the US providers are not delivering fast and cheap services.

Thirdly, Australia have got not a so high percentage of rural population. Population is concentrated on the coasts.

If you are not able to see there is a problem, you won't solve it.

Re:the real problem

[houghi]

eresting list. Especially when I see that Belgium has "low levels of participation in politics" even though there is a law that you MUST vote, not that you CAN vote. So all people who ellegible to vote will vote (unless they are able to get out of it. e.g. be on a holiday or work on that Sunday). The huge majority of adults is ellegible to vote. Exceptions will be declared by a court order.

To be correct: you are not obliged to vote, you are obliged to show up. If you vote or not is not known if the ballot is in paper and you can vote 'no vote' if it is electronic. Voting is as anonymous as the computers allow it to be.)

Re:the real problem

[ichthus]

One place I went (to be unnamed) the person was paying $300 a month for 2Mb and sites like Starbucks, Amazon and Walmart were blocked

Please. Name the place, or you're full of crap.

Re:the real problem

[ichthus]

Oh, no wait. I guessed it! You were on a Chinese space station, right?

Re:the real problem

[tsstahl]

I'm not sure how to take that comment--even shills don't believe satellite internet is viable.

Re:the real problem

[e3m4n]

not blocking content is one thing.... asking for standardized pricing is not even remotely realistic. The cost of equipment is considerable. When you're dealing with a technology(or more than one) that has distance limitations, your pricing model changes due to the density of population within that radius. In a major metropolis like Dallas or Manhattan you could easily create a PoP (Point of Presence) and reach 100% capacity, easily, within the 1000m distance that copper-based technologies strive to fall within. Take, for example, VDSL2. Once you reach 1000m your max bandwidth is ~40mb. Lets say you have a 2u shelf that will mux 96 copper pairs. On top of this equipment you'll need to invest into an A and B leg -48V DC power, fuse panel, a fiber uplink for the long haul, and a switch to bridge your concentrators with your uplink. This expense plus the lease/upkeep of the space this equipment resides in factor into your monthly operating costs of the equipment.

In a major metropolitan area, simply installing a rack in the utility space of a high-rise apartment building and a fiber run to the building to easily gain 96 customers, all whom would easily fall within the ideal 500m service range. To recover the initial $20k investment in creating the PoP over a 3year period you would only have to eat $6 per customer toward repayment on top of the operating cost of providing service to the building (bandwidth, fiber loop cost, power, lease). Lets say your wholesale cost of bandwidth is $2000/mo per gigabit to a carrier like Cogent. Lets say all 96 customers were watching 1 4K video stream at peak evening hours. at 15Mbps per 4K stream thats roughly 1.5Gbps of peak bandwidth you'd need to this location. So lets just say the operating expense of this location is around $2k in bandwidth and another $500/mo for the power and lease of the space. Assume another $1000/mo for your fiber loop back to your main location within the city. That's $37/mo plus the $6 recover of investment. So any amount over $43 is considered profit. This is an over simplified economic scale but it suffices for the illustration.

Now take the same build-out in a rural area. Some properties are more than 500m between buildings. In these rural situations, or even remote suburbs with a few options like cable, phone co, etc, you are lucky to get even 10 customers within the range of your concentrator, Additionally your loop costs and infrastructure costs increase as well. But simply using the exact same numbers above, as if it was possible to get these rates, Each customer has to pay $350/mo before the first profit is realized, assuming you actually closed the deal on 10 customers. In a more rural area its more cost effective to just run fiber directly to the building that is sitting on 10+ acres of land than to fool with any sort of build-out. That will cost, at a minimum, $3000/mo plus the cost of directional boring to get the fiber to you (I often see quotes north of $100k).

So you want a policy/law that says they cant charge joe schmo more than metropolitan rates for this service that will cost a provider $100k in buildout cost and another $3500/mo in operating costs??? Here is what is going to happen. They will create another sort of Universal Services group whose job it is to roll out the modern equivalent of the Rural Electrification Project. Metropolitan residents will start seeing new fees and services on their bill along with increase expenses in order to subsidize the buildout and cost of connecting Rural America. The average bill for a Metropolitan dweller will now pay $200+/mo for his services so that Rural America can get some resemblance of broadband at $150/mo. But hey, it complies with the law because the rural dweller is paying something close to what the Metropolitans are paying, even if its not quite as good.

As long as distance and attenuation are as severely limiting as they currently are, the ratio of expense and density severely impact the footprint and availability of broadband in the USA. Pla

Re:the real problem

[luis_a_espinal]

Well in New Zealand I have access to 26 different ISPs, Fibre goes in next week and I can have 900/400 unlimited, no traffic shaping, no port blocking, ie true net neutrality for US$68 / month. This is what happens when you keep big business out of government and you have a government by the people for the people. You guys should try democracy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

you left out the fact that NZ has a tiny population consolidated mainly in a few centres making this sort of option very viable and cheap whereas the same is incredibly expensive to provide in Australia or the US or many countries with exponentially more people are area to cover.

You left out the fact that 80% of Americans live in densely packed metropolitan areas with densities comparable with metropolitan areas in NZ. The argument about lacking the same variety of internet options only apply to rural America.

For 80% of the US population, the lack of alternatives have little to do with absolute population numbers (and more with big bizness/gubment red tape orgies.)

Re:the real problem

[argStyopa]

I rather think it's more a factor of a very remote country having fewer people than even the 10th-largest metro area in the US, and the 200th in population density.

If you took one of those US metro areas, isolated it 1000 miles from everyone else, and then spread it over 25x the space...yeah, I think even Chicago or Detroit could manage to run themselves without the constant murders, corruption, and venality.

But I don't disagree with you in principle, TBH.

Re:the real problem

[mesterha]

Everyone should move to Alaska; they must have great Internet.

Re:the real problem

[HeckRuler]

The real problem is that there are only one or two internet providers in many places, and network neutrality is only one symptom of that problem.

Huh? it's a symptom? ...Did you mean "and the threat to network neutrality is only one symptom"? Because that would make more sense.

Network Neutrality a fundemental principle upon which the Internet was created and currently operates. When it became commercial, the userbase expected it to operate on NN principles and generally threw a fit whenever an ISP did something that violates it. Like blocking VoIP, throttling protocols, and bundling website fees. Most of which the ISPs recanted under pressure. They only tried to do these things once the market consolidated and monopolies grew. ie, one or two providers refusing to compete with each other leads is a threat to network neurality.

The FCC's title ii classification and California's legislation are efforts to regulate and enforce a neutral network since the customers are unable to enforce it due to the monopolies in place.

The solution is to allow competition, and there are places in America where internet is perfectly fine, but not in Silicon Valley.

Nor.... god-damned near anywhere. Certainly not Colordao, Iowa, or Nebraska, that's for sure.

Competition would absolutely let the customers enforce network neutrality, as they've done for the majority of the past. But market consolidation (and exclusivity deals with local municipalities) removed all competition. Well, Google tried laying down fiber. But the Telecoms selectively dropped prices in those towns and left and right in an effort to block and undercut potential new competition. YAY Competition lowering prices! But it means Google can't make money at it and they've stopped all expansion. If Mr. Moneybags Google can't overcome the artificial barrier to entry then there is no free market. It's time to either regulate the ISPs into a pseudo government agencies or to whip out Uncle Sherman's hammer and bust up the telecoms again into small regional businesses barred from colluding with their old co-workers.

Re:the real problem

[sit1963nz]

In New Zealand our elections are held on a weekend to ensure the greatest number of people are able to vote. We also have the ability to vote for something like 1-2 weeks prior via a "special vote" We ensure the greatest opportunity to vote, we don't force people to vote, abstaining is a valid choice.

Re:the real problem

[sit1963nz]

1/3rd of NZs population lives in Auckland, that skews a lot of things here.

Re:the real problem

[AmiMoJo]

GCHQ you got mod points today? Or was this just my regular stalker?

Re:the real problem

[phantomfive]

My personally preferred solution is to divide the ISPs from the infrastructure owners. Just like was done in the dialup days.

Re:the real problem

[WindowsStar]

@Maxwell'sSilverLART HugeNet and ViaSAT both state they do not service most of these areas. When I asked why it is because they do not have installers or support techs in those areas. If you know of another Satellite company please post it here I will pass that info on and have these people that are desperate for better Internet call them.

They're not retarded or clueless

[rsilvergun]

saying so let's them off the hook. They know exactly what they're doing. I just wish the voters would stop calling them names and start calling them out on their pro-corporate, anti-consumer and anti-worker agenda. There just comes a time to call a spade a spade...

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?

Re:So, is anyone going to change how they vote?

[aardvarkjoe]

/. 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).

Then how do you know that many voted for Trump? ESP?

Re:So, is anyone going to change how they vote?

[markdavis]

>"But if any are out there willing to raise their voices I want to ask: what, if anything, will make you stop supporting him?"

I think you are asking the wrong question. A better question might be "At what point will the nation seriously consider a new voting system, like ranked choice, that will make it possible for better candidates to gain traction and other parties to actually compete fairly?" Otherwise, we will continue to pretend that the current D and the current R are the only valid and rational choices. Most voting now is near meaningless because of where one geographically lives, and/or single-issue polarization, and/or voting for the "least worst", and/or horrible candidates on the only two tickets than can win because of the "first past the post" system we still use. The political spectrum is not, and should not, be a two point location on a single line that attempts to describe everything.

Since voting methods are controlled by the States (and hasn't yet been unconstitutionally taken over by the Fed, like so much already), meaningful voting method change actually COULD happen (which is the major reason for the 10th Amendment). It is making inroads in local governments all over the country and starting to pick up interest at State levels. It would have a huge positive impact in party primaries, too (regardless of which party). It doesn't matter what party you support or what your political positions are, IRV/AV/RC is good for EVERYONE.

http://fairvote.org/

Re:So, is anyone going to change how they vote?

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

You want an honest answer? The Democrat party has become so toxic that I will never support them. They could be running against Usama Bin Laden's zombie corpse and I would still vote against them.

If you want people to stop supporting Trump, you need viable third parties. As long as the only choice is between Trump and a party that has lost its mind and has gone so far off the deep end, the choice is pretty simple: Trump all the way. It's not like there's another option.

Re:So, is anyone going to change how they vote?

[dbrueck]

I guess it depends on what you mean by 'support' him. I didn't vote for him, I don't own any Trump hats or anything, I wish somebody would close his Twitter account. But I'm also not in the camp of instantly opposing everything he does solely because he did it. For better or for worse, he's our (I'm an American) president, so I "support" him just like I supported all prior presidents. I thought the Republicans acted like idiot children towards Obama and the Democrats so far have shown they are no better with Trump.

Trump's polling numbers are consistent with other presidents at this point in time in their tenure. You've mentioned some things he's done you don't like, but to any of those issues there is almost always considerable nuance (anyone who thinks net neutrality, TPP, etc. are easy-to-decide black and white issues have almost certainly not studied them very closely) so for me that's not exactly a damning list. Further, there's a number of decent things he's done (both his SCOTUS nominees are pretty good, for example).

As a person, I think Trump is a bit of a buffoon (or the best ever troll in the history of the world, but I struggle to give him that much credit) but if I try to look at his presidency so far objectively, then he's not actually that much of an outlier (which is both positive and kinda depressing).

As a moderate who doesn't consistently vote for either party, I will say this though: the bizarre hysteria on the far-left has actually made me dislike Trump a little less than I did originally. I hate extremes on either side and I don't for a minute believe a majority of Democrats are like the "liberals" that get on the news these days, but man those people are completely unhinged lately.

So it's not so much that Trump has gotten any better, it's just that the alternative continues to look pretty bad, so it casts him in a better light. I think that's a big part of how he got elected in the first place.

Re:So, is anyone going to change how they vote?

[oldgraybeard]

Everyone may get a second bite of cake.

"I get it, he's not Hilary. But Hilary's gone, and Trump's poll numbers don't budge."

Is Hillary Clinton secretly planning to run in 2020?

So in 2020 everyone may get a do over. Only time will tell for sure.

Just my 2 cents ;)

Re:So, is anyone going to change how they vote?

[Nkwe]

My vote will be dependent on who the candidates are in the next election. Since I have no idea who is going to run against Trump next cycle, I really can't say at this point if I would vote for them or not (and if not, if I would vote for Trump or just abstain.) It also isn't guaranteed that Trump will run again; who knows what might happen prior to the next election.

Re:So, is anyone going to change how they vote?

[Powercntrl]

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

Ghost guns for everyone, whoop-de-fucking-do. And when their 3D printed "2nd amendment toy" goes horribly wrong, that's why we have Darwin Awards. Meanwhile, the Trump administration reinstated drone registration, thus requiring me to register my tiny flying camera with the FAA. It's rather disturbing when your country is more quick to scrutinize flying toys than assault rifles.

what, if anything, will make you stop supporting him?

Trump has a bit of a cult-like following, with that whole unquestioning devotion thing going on. Trump could literally set the whole country ablaze, and some of them would still be happy knowing a bunch of liberals are burning too.

Re:So, is anyone going to change how they vote?

[tbannist]

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.

Actually, Trump's actions actually drove Harley Davidson to send jobs overseas. If Trump had done nothing at all, they wouldn't be opening a new factory overseas to avoid the new tariffs on motorcycles exported from the United States.

I know Trump supporters are out there on this forum.... But if any are out there willing to raise their voices I want to ask: what, if anything, will make you stop supporting him?

I can tell you two things that will cause Trump supporters to stop supporting him: He loses the election in 2020 (or is impeached before then) or he admits to raising taxes. There are few conceivable other things that would cause wide spread abandonment of Trump because in general the new Republicans only care about two things: taxes and winning. And to flip the Twain quote, we're not sure about the taxes.

Re:So, is anyone going to change how they vote?

[Goldsmith]

The /. crowd is not the people you're looking for. Sure, there may be a few Trump supporters here, but this is not the demographic that is his base.

There are a few leaders in the Democratic party who seem to understand this, but negatives regarding Trump will not move his base. Positive alternatives will. As long as Trump continues to successfully bait most of the Democratic leadership into complaining about him more often than offering positive alternatives, his base will remain. There is a LOT of marketing theory wrapped up into that. Word choice is very, very important. "Abolish ICE" is a great example. That's a negative phrase that energizes the Democratic base and hardens Trump's base. It's an amazing gift to Trump that solved his political problem of immoral immigration policies potentially fracturing the evangelical portion of his base. That could easily have been pitched using positive language such as "Simplify Immigration" or maybe more bluntly "Let Good Immigrants In." Obviously, I'm not a slogan writer.

The core problem is not Trump's base, it's actually people like me. I look at the Democratic party leadership (I gave up on the Republicans when they let Trump's ugly populism grow) and am flabbergasted at how bad they are at understanding the current political landscape and effectively countering Trump. I'm left thinking that there has to be some group of politicians left that doesn't have their heads up their ass! This is paving the way for either a significant 3rd party spoiler or (more likely) a populist challenge to Democratic leadership from the left. You can already see the excitement in the media over that second possibility. Neither situation results in Trump and the (corrupted) Republican leadership losing in the short term, and I'm pretty certain replacing one group of inexperienced populists with another is not going to result in demonstrably good government. What a disaster.

A real pro

[bursch-X]

From all his arguments and analogies, he seems to think that the internet is just like cable TV. Good to know that the Internet is in proficient hands...

Re:A real pro

[prisoner-of-enigma]

In the sense that the Internet and cable TV are both mechanisms for content delivery, they are just alike. Try thinking outside your narrow interpretation of things.

Re:A real pro

[i286NiNJA]

It's your naive interpretation of things. That's how the cable company wants us to think of the internet but it's a 2 way communication medium and that's the major difference.
They could have had the information revolution a decade earlier along with all the massive profits that came with it but instead they chased short term profits at the expense of themselves and consumers.

Total non argument if that's really how you feel I hear they'll give you a few more channels if you drop the internet. So do it now so we don't have to see you here anymore.

Re:A real pro

[Q-Hack!]

Kavanaugh compares ISPs to cable TV operators, rather than phone companies.

Does anybody remember the argument against the Comcast/Time-Warner merger back in 2014? The idea that combining the ISP with the content creators was going to lead to bad things. Welcome to that reality.

Re:A real pro

[serviscope_minor]

In the sense that the Internet and cable TV are both mechanisms for content delivery, they are just alike.

So are the roads.

Try thinking outside your narrow interpretation

Yeah I mean give the guy a break. It's not like he actually needs to know shit in order to interpret laws about it.

Re:A real pro

[Areyoukiddingme]

A content delivery system supported by ad revenue. What medium am I describing?

Radio. But not the telegraph.

Re:"Selectively modify"

[Bert64]

They don't need to modify the websites to track you, all requests and responses to these websites are already traversing their infrastructure and can easily be tracked passively.

Headline could read...

[prisoner-of-enigma]

The headline could instead read "Supreme Court nominee supports broad interpretation of First Amendment rights, non-interference in the private sector" and nobody would be upset about it and it would be an equally true headline. It's all in the phrasing. So a conservative-leaning judge supports free markets and broad application of the First Amendment. This surprises people...why, exactly?

Re:Headline could read...

[RhettLivingston]

A broad interpretation of first amendment rights would not support the allowance of individuals or corporations to block free speech which is what this does. It is as if someone has allowed the activation of a device in the public square to selectively block the transmission of sound from whoever hasn't paid the price to talk or whose agendas are not favored by those in control of the medium.

For the right of free speech to remain effective, it must be carried forward into the new medium that carries the majority of that speech. If it is relegated to the antiquity of the public square, it is dead.

Kavanaugh's interpretation is a twisting of words to match an agenda that is opposite of what the surface view of the words indicate. It allows complete and arbitrary regulation of speech by business and government, which is exactly what they want.

Re:Headline could read...

[RhettLivingston]

Note that with religion it prohibited congress from both respecting an establishment of religion and prohibiting the free exercise of it. With speech, it breaks that pattern and only stops congress from abridging the freedom of speech. It does not stop congress from supporting the freedom of speech. Why prohibit support of religion and not prohibit support of freedom of speech? Perhaps because they knew that freedom of speech would need the support of law? And who do laws target if not individuals and corporations?

Re: Ok, Brett Kavanaugh What if Your Sites Are Blo

[Anonymous Coward]

Everything you said is illegal. The left proposes nothing but illegal activity. It must come down to tit for tat right? It must come down wrong for wrong and violence for violence right?

Re:Simple trade offs

[Waffle Iron]

+ firm supporter of the 2nd amendment, without which all other amendments become moot

-1: Naive idiot.

Information is power.

Small arms are *not* power.

Re:Simple trade offs

[whoever57]

+ understands that the people who wrote the constitution should be deferred to when legal questions arise about the document that they wrote.

He didn't say that. He said something about respecting the original text, and history. Just about every other judge has issued decisions that are not supported by the literal text of the Constitution -- some the most glaring examples being the addition of the word "affects" into the Interstate Commerce Clause, or the "National Security exception", or the "Good Faith exception" to the 4th.

You are not being honest. You just think he will issue decisions that are in line with your dogma.

Bad Argument

[SuperKendall]

Most definitely not true in the case of the US supreme court, which is wildly corrupt, making interpretation of law based upon what they believed,

That was partly true with Kennedy as a swing vote.

Your argument falls apart completely with Kavanaugh who is a real stickler when it comes to judging based on what the law says. He has sided for and against the government in many cases where each time he was making a ruling based on law, now on what he might "believe".

Between Gorsuch and Kavanaugh it really is the case that the laws that are written will matter and not just be tossed aside at the drop of a hat because an SC justice has the feels.

Re:Bad Argument

[thegarbz]

where each time he was making a ruling based on law

If this was as clear cut as you imply there would be no purpose in having a supreme court in the first place. The very nature of the way the laws are written leave them well and truly open to interpretation and that is precisely where personal belief does come into it.

Re:Bad Argument

[shaitand]

The ISPs are carriers of speech across state lines, as such they are solidly within the scope of the commerce clause. The right to free press, free assembly, free speech, and the freedom to travel between states are ALL negated by what this justice is suggesting, that these carriers can block and even alter speech, press, and commerce in flight across state lines.

Kavanaugh is proposing to ignore the Constitution.

Re:Bad Argument

[XxtraLarGe]

The ISPs are carriers of speech across state lines, as such they are solidly within the scope of the commerce clause. The right to free press, free assembly, free speech, and the freedom to travel between states are ALL negated by what this justice is suggesting, that these carriers can block and even alter speech, press, and commerce in flight across state lines.

Replace ISPs with Trains. Does it still work?

Re:Bad Argument

[Qzukk]

Replace ISPs with Trains. Does it still work?

What, the original Common Carriers? Did you think through whatever argument you were trying to make before you started typing or did you just pick some random thing?

Re:Bad Argument

[XxtraLarGe]

What, the original Common Carriers? Did you think through whatever argument you were trying to make before you started typing or did you just pick some random thing?

If I hadn't thought it through, and picked something random, I might have said starfish or jack-o-lantern. I picked trains for a specific reason.

Does the 1st amendment cut both ways?

[whoever57]

If the reason for saying net neutrality is unconstitutional is the ISPs' first amendment right to make editorial decisions on what they carry, does that mean that they can also be sued or prosecuted over illegal content that they carry?

Re:Does the 1st amendment cut both ways?

[Anonymous Coward]

>does that mean that they can also be sued or prosecuted over illegal content that they carry?

Yeah, but that's always been true. If you're a bad guy doing illegal things on your ISP network and they knowingly let you get away with it, they could be held responsible. It would be evidentiary high bar to overcome by the prosecution, but it would be possible.

Re:Does the 1st amendment cut both ways?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, but that's always been true. If you're a bad guy doing illegal things on your ISP network and they knowingly let you get away with it, they could be held responsible. It would be evidentiary high bar to overcome by the prosecution, but it would be possible.

Except his point is "Deciding whether and how to transmit ESPN and deciding whether and how to transmit ESPN.com are not meaningfully different for First Amendment purposes." implies that ISPs who transmit illegal content are making an editorial decision. Cable TV companies don't accidentally transmit ESPN. Allow ISPs to selectively engage in editorial control on the internet is inherently making them complicit in all conduct they should have known about. It's precisely Title II protections that spell out their non-interference that provides any sort of legal protection.

If you want to go against this, you basically allow a lot more free reign in newspapers and magazines to just look the other way and print whatever. This would also run counter to FOSTA which precisely seems geared toward treating websites more like newspapers with presumed editorial control.

If you only go half-assed in your beliefs, though, and try to act like an evidentiary high bar must be reached, then you're making the absurd argument that 3 out of every 4 bank robbers can get away with their crimes* because they just thought they were going skiing and they took turns being the driver.

* This might seem like hyperbole, but it follows along the same parallels. It is nominally sufficient that a person who is party to a crime after not exercise due diligence is an accomplice. That a company chooses to not hire enough people to engage in sufficient censorship to detect, block, and report illegal content inherently makes them negligent which on discovering illegal conduct on their network would make them the "driver" of activities that would likely be impossible without their assistance. You start to throw that idea away and brothels, drug dens, and really all sorts of things are suddenly effectively legal.

But I guess if you're a strict Constitutionalist, you'll ignore all sorts of common sense and pretend the First Amendment is special and the applicability of law around the First Amendment should be treated radically different to all other potential crimes because "magic".

Re:Does the 1st amendment cut both ways?

[Anonymous Coward]

You and your +1 moderator aren't very familiar with the concept he's pointing out.

If the carrier isn't a "common carrier," then the carrier can be prosecuted for "illegal" content even if they *unknowingly* help distribute it.

One of the main complaints about the current legislation around ISPs is that they got a "have the cake and eat it too" sweet deal with the 1996 telecom act. The cable, wireless, and non-telephony ISPs got to have all the privileges of being as common carrier with none of the responsibilities and duties that were supposed to come with those legal privileges.

IF the ISPs are not common carriers and become "editors" of their content, then we're back to Cable-TV days where the cable company is resposible for the content they distribute. That's why Cable Co.'s would flip their shit back in the day if bad words or sex were shown on public television, because *they* would get in trouble, not just the channel that provided the content.

Of course, that's not gonna happen. More special rights and legal exceptions will be carved for the big data distributors so that they can do whatever they want, even though actual, real people won't have those kinds of legal exceptions, because "fuck yeah, freedom".

Re:"Selectively modify"

[i286NiNJA]

That's a naive view of how the internet works. Also you misspelled whether earlier.
If they can inject content into the websites you visit they could conceivably view every single form you post and record the content of the sites you view. If they monitor the connections you make they often can only see that you visited popular sites, hosting providers. and downloaded content from popular CDNs. Not to mention if they did this they would ruin your browsing security, they never had much desire to do it before but maybe if someone makes an official decree that it's ok we can hope that it will become business as usual.

Um... Net Neutrality is a matter of law

[rsilvergun]

so it most certainly does apply. There are still plenty of us that are of the mind that the existing law gives the FCC the right to enforce it. At some point there are going to be challenges made to both the Net Neutrality repeal and local Net Neutrality laws and they are both going to go before this man (if he's appointed).

But even if it wasn't a matter of law if shows his character and belief system; specifically that he sides with corporations over people.

Re:Um... Net Neutrality is a matter of law

[Maxwell'sSilverLART]

There are still plenty of us that are of the mind that the existing law gives the FCC the right to enforce it.

His argument was grounded in the First Amendment. No mere statute can override the Constitution.

Re:Um... Net Neutrality is a matter of law

[Areyoukiddingme]

His argument was grounded in the First Amendment.

His argument was not "grounded" in the First Amendment. It was pathetically, desperately, incorrectly dragging in the First Amendment, then proceeding to misinterpret it to suit his own agenda.

Re:Anti-First Amendment

[dbrueck]

Wait, what??

If I wanted to start an ISP that blocked any website that starts with the letter S, why should anyone have the right to tell me I can't do that? (this is not a rhetorical question - I'd really like to hear your answer)

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.

Re:On the whole second amendment thing

[burningcpu]

Vietnam? Afghanistan? Iraq?

Re:On the whole second amendment thing

[l0n3s0m3phr34k]

Indeed, that's why when the British did finally recover enough to "come back" they burned the White House down in 1812.

Re:On the whole second amendment thing

[Anonymous Coward]

are you trying to point out he is right? Vietnam was an organised military that the US lost too, as was Iraq, afghans were more civilian and were well and truly beaten just they resorted to gorilla tactics to make it too expensive for the US to root them out completely, from a military perspective they were well and truly defeated and could have been obliterated had the US actually had the balls to go all out for them.

Re:On the whole second amendment thing

[orgenegro]

A modern military is not good at keeping people conquered. For that you need a police state and an unarmed populace. The United States cannot even handle a place like Iraq with our army, one of the biggest in the world. What would they do in the United States, where bombing wedding parties would have even worse public relations? Where the citizens you are at war with might be teaching at St. Andrew's Episcopal School where Barron Trump goes to school? You don't even need to truly "win" you just need to make the government give up, or preferably, be too afraid to ever start a war in the first place.

Re:Anti-First Amendment

[dwywit]

I don't have a deep understanding about this, but doesn't it come down to the protections afforded to carriers that they aren't held responsible for the traffic they carry?

IOW, if you want the privilege of protection from carrying illegal content, e.g. child pron, you have to have a "hands off" approach to the traffic. Once you start examining that traffic to decide whether to carry it or not, you assume some of the responsibility for that content.

Don't the big ISPs want that protection but *still* be able to examine traffic (for shaping/throttling/billing purposes)?

1787

[Minupla]

As a non-American I find it odd to observe from a distance the esteem that a document written in 1787 is held.

Few other concepts from that era are held in unquestioning reverence by as many people. Horses and buggies? Leeches for tonsillitis? Nope we've moved on.

But suggest that a document in 1787 might require a bit of interpretation as society has moved on a bit since then? Somehow this is an unthinkable affront to the framers of said document.

My own country holds our founders in a bit less regard. John A McDonald? Any decent highschooler will tell you he was an alcoholic, racist, womanizer and all around asshole. Why highschooler? Because we learn it in school. Canadians tend not to place our leaders in amber and preserve them forever more. We don't dietize them. We recognize their faults and virtues in equal measure.

Sometimes we do it to excess, but it might be worth thinking about. I'm reasonably sure the framers when they held it as self-evident that all men were created equal, they didn't intend to be placed on a pedestal for all time, nor I think would a person who truly believes that sentiment expect their words to be enshrined in amber, never to be looked at with a critical gaze?

Might it be time for a V2 rewrite as opposed to another patch release? Just a thought.

Re:1787

[Kobun]

We have an exact mechanism for re-writes and revisions. It has been used 27 times so far, with the most recent amendment completing ratification in 1992 (after 202 years).

Which piece, exactly, do you feel is in need of a re-write? What general form would you like to see the modification take? No cop outs here - the 27th amendment was finally pushed through by a 19-year old sophmore college student (who was pissed that he got a C for saying that the amendment could be passed). If you think you've got something that will pass the process, let's hear it.

Re:1787

[Voyager529]

As a non-American I find it odd to observe from a distance the esteem that a document written in 1787 is held.

Few other concepts from that era are held in unquestioning reverence by as many people. Horses and buggies? Leeches for tonsillitis? Nope we've moved on.

This statement ignores most major world religions, whose sacred texts predate 1787 by thousands of years. But, this is Slashdot, so let's sidestep the Bible, the Koran, the To'rah, and the Bhagavad Gita. The Kama Sutra goes back a cool millenium and a half, while admittedly not a single volume, Newtonian physics is still actively taught in high schools and colleges, as is Pythagorean theorem and all kinds of mathematical principles which long predate the US Constitution.

But suggest that a document in 1787 might require a bit of interpretation as society has moved on a bit since then? Somehow this is an unthinkable affront to the framers of said document.

The framers wrote *in the Constitution* Article 5, which states:

The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as Part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States, or by Conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the Congress; Provided that no Amendment which may be made prior to the Year One thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any Manner affect the first and fourth Clauses in the Ninth Section of the first Article; and that no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate.

I'm very hard pressed to see alterations to the Consitution as an "unthinkable affront", though they did make it clear that amendments need to be about things a whole lot of people agree on, not just the wealthy or the coastline counties or the north or the south.

My own country holds our founders in a bit less regard. John A McDonald? Any decent highschooler will tell you he was an alcoholic, racist, womanizer and all around asshole. Why highschooler? Because we learn it in school. Canadians tend not to place our leaders in amber and preserve them forever more. We don't dietize them. We recognize their faults and virtues in equal measure.

Sometimes we do it to excess, but it might be worth thinking about. I'm reasonably sure the framers when they held it as self-evident that all men were created equal, they didn't intend to be placed on a pedestal for all time, nor I think would a person who truly believes that sentiment expect their words to be enshrined in amber, never to be looked at with a critical gaze?

This seems tangentially relevant. The founding fathers are not generally considered to be inerrant men without fault, but men who managed to have enough foresight to set up a government that didn't rely on a monarch like every major world power of the time, and gave more power to citizens (admittedly lacking on the 'women' and 'non-white' front for far longer than should have been) than most any other government in existence at the time. Their faults are known, but an esteem for the document itself does not inherently mandate putting the founding fathers on a pedestal.

Might it be time for a V2 rewrite as opposed to another patch release? Just a thought.

Well, the majority of the actual-Constitution involves the existence and operation of the Congressional houses, Executive branch, and Judicial branch. If we're doing a rewrite, I'm open to suggestions of government systems which aren't either pure democracy (Twitter and Reddit have proved that to be a generally-bad idea), a Monarchy (so much nope...),

Re:1787

[LynnwoodRooster]

The Constitution does not need interpretation; LAWS established need interpretation and to be checked that they are Constitutional.

Re:1787

[Minupla]

That was my comment of patch vs rewrite. In all the countries in the world the US has the oldest governing document.

Not because it's the oldest country obviously, but because the rest of the world has gone through multiple rewrites of their governing documents (when Canada's supreme court has a question, they can call up Berry who's 85 and living in Saskatchewan, and ask him what the heck he was thinking when they wrote that bit :))

Doing a rewrite allows you to learn from mistakes (yours and others) and frame a governing document that's consistent with your countries' views and beliefs now as opposed to 231 years ago.

Re:1787

[Minupla]

This statement ignores most major world religions, whose sacred texts predate 1787 by thousands of years. But, this is Slashdot, so let's sidestep the Bible,

Actually let's not :), because it proves my point well.

The Constitution has a strong faction who believes it should be read as the framers intended. While I will grant that there are people who would argue the same about the Bible, the Pope for example has not gotten up recently and ranted against the use of fabric blends in clothing (Leviticus 19:19 reads, âoeYou are to keep My statutes. You shall not breed together two kinds of your cattle; you shall not sow your field with two kinds of seed, nor wear a garment upon you of two kinds of material mixed together.â), round haircuts, (Leviticus 19:27 reads âoeYou shall not round off the side-growth of your heads nor harm the edges of your beard.â) footballs, (Leviticus 11:8, which is discussing pigs, reads âoeYou shall not eat of their flesh nor touch their carcasses; they are unclean to you.â) tattoos ("Leviticus 19:28 reads, âoeYou shall not make any cuts in your body for the dead nor make any tattoo marks on yourselves: I am the Lord")

Somehow I suspect that were these items found in the Constitution, we'd be hearing all sorts of interesting cases!. So I'd argue that my point stands.

The rest of your points fall into the 'reasonable people disagree' category and if it wasn't my original point, I could devil's advocate your position too, but I will point out that generally speaking (probably with the exceptions of the 1st and 3rd, 4th and 5th - and the 5th
  largely because of its place in popular culture due to police procedurals) are held in less regard with may of them having been repealed, and most Americans being largely unaware of most of them

I will point out that my wife, who has been out of the US for a bit, but was born the daughter of a Navy crewman commented (paraphrasing) It'll be difficult for people living in the US to see some of these points. I've lived outside of the US for more then a decade so I won't divorce you for maligning the Constitution, but you might get voted off the Internet!

Well argued and I thank you sir/madam for getting my morning off to a good start.

Re:1787

[phantomfive]

Might it be time for a V2 rewrite as opposed to another patch release? Just a thought.

That possibility is on the table, but the people who wrote the original constitution spent way more time thinking about the issues than our current crop of politicians. It's easy to read the declaration of independence and respect it's author. It's hard to find any writing of any politician today and respect it.

If there were another constitution written today, it almost certainly would be a worse constitution, with all kinds of weird compromises based on the issues that will only matter for a few more weeks.

Re:1787

[mjwx]

As a non-American I find it odd to observe from a distance the esteem that a document written in 1787 is held.

Few other concepts from that era are held in unquestioning reverence by as many people. Horses and buggies? Leeches for tonsillitis? Nope we've moved on.

But suggest that a document in 1787 might require a bit of interpretation as society has moved on a bit since then? Somehow this is an unthinkable affront to the framers of said document.

My own country holds our founders in a bit less regard. John A McDonald? Any decent highschooler will tell you he was an alcoholic, racist, womanizer and all around asshole. Why highschooler? Because we learn it in school. Canadians tend not to place our leaders in amber and preserve them forever more. We don't dietize them. We recognize their faults and virtues in equal measure.

Sometimes we do it to excess, but it might be worth thinking about. I'm reasonably sure the framers when they held it as self-evident that all men were created equal, they didn't intend to be placed on a pedestal for all time, nor I think would a person who truly believes that sentiment expect their words to be enshrined in amber, never to be looked at with a critical gaze?

Might it be time for a V2 rewrite as opposed to another patch release? Just a thought.

A lot of countries hold their founding documents in high esteem, however most do not trust them to safe guard their rights as when it gets down to it, a constitution or bill of right is just ink on a page. Rights are protected by people, if the population supports people who restrict rights, even rights for minorities and unpopular people then those rights are no longer protected for everyone and any document is rendered powerless.

This is why I've never worried about Australia not having a bill of rights. The defence of rights occurs in the court and the Australian courts have done a very good job over the years striking down laws that are unconstitutional or even simply against the public good... Then again, Australian judges are generally selected on merit, rather than being political appointees.

The American reverence for their document is nothing for them to be ashamed of, however the do need to lose the belief in it's magically protective properties.

Re:1787

[crimson tsunami]

Of course the Constitution needs interpretation. Otherwise I can claim it means anything I want it to mean, and so can everyone else. Someone needs to be able to decide who is right.

Re:1787

[Kobun]

https://www.joelonsoftware.com...

That's software, these are laws. Turns out we use ridiculously old laws in an ongoing fashion - pretty much for the same reason that Joel specifies in that article.

I'm going to assume that pressing you for specifics is just going to result in more evasion. If you would like to identify a particular piece of the constitution that you feel is outdated so that we can discuss it, I'll be happy to pick this back up.

Re:1787

[strikethree]

As a non-American I find it odd to observe from a distance the esteem that a document written in 1787 is held.

Then you are likely unaware of the fight that has been going on for thousands of years concerning the freedoms and liberties of the individual versus the necessity of handing lots of power to a centralized authority.

There is a reason the Magna Carta is a deeply revered document today. There is an even better reason that some documents written for the founding of the United States of America are deeply esteemed: They give the individual a basis to fight for their freedom.

I am unsure about you, but for me, without individual freedom, this universe is not worth living in. That makes those documents important.

Re:1787

[HeckRuler]

Might it be time for a V2 rewrite as opposed to another patch release? Just a thought.

That's advocating open revolution. Likely leading to civil war and sectarian violence in the USA.

Do we trust whoever is in power to be MORE keen on checks and balances and LESS self-serving than the founding fathers? Nope, not a chance.

Re:1787

[fatwilbur]

This is nonsense - John A McDonald is definitely held in high regard in Canada as the founder of the country. No decent highschooler will tell you what you've written. That is simply the product of the ultra-liberal movement overtaking universities in Canada and abroad. Due to the way aboriginals were treated (commonplace by anyone at the time), there is a concerted effort to rewrite history and eliminate historical figures that were because they were products of their time.

Nobody in Canada supports that hippy garbage. Yes their faults and strengths as humans are generally well known if you read any history, but only the most militant SJWs would use those four adjectives to primarily describe him.

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.

Re:You need to eat yourself

[Anonymous Coward]

words that aren't 100 crystal clear

Bullshit. The Constitution is a masterpiece of simplistic language.

Unless, of course, you're a numpty cunt whose pulling on jackboots.

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:It's not esteem

[Anonymous Coward]

Our problem is that our memory is too short. We need to remember back to the roots of the good times.

We were in deep trouble and then the new deal and WWII brought about one of the biggest booms in our history for the middle class lasting from WWII into the 70s. The portion of our country in the lowest levels was steadily shrinking throughout those times. Opportunity abounded mostly because of the social reforms that occurred - powered by the massive gains in productivity amongst women and minorities that had previously been nearly idle in our society.

The old, big money finally started regaining control in the 70s and stifling the policies that had fueled the rise of the lower class into middle class. The result has been an ever growing income gap since 1980 restoring the corrupt powers of old on top of a nearly insurmountable cliff of income separation and the power that implies.

The middle class has now been tricked into giving those powers even more power as they have used misdirection to blame those that have been opposing them for the ills they've caused. The very people who have caused the reallocation of wealth since the 80s, that have caused the pain felt by the people, are the ones who have regained power now. We are revisiting the fiscal mistakes of the roaring 20s and it will end up where that ended up.

Because there's a lot of right wing people on /.

[rsilvergun]

just judging by the comments on any gun control thread here, and you won't convince me that very many of them voted for Hilary.

Actually the Dems vote with Trump quite a bit

[rsilvergun]

538's tracking it. See here. There are plenty of right wing Democrats who support what he's doing. They helped him repeal Dodd Frank in piece meal, so you can thank those right wing Dems like Pelosi & Schumer for the next election.

Re:Actually the Dems vote with Trump quite a bit

[dbrueck]

Sure. But again, though, issues like Dodd-Frank legislation have considerable nuance (it had over 2000 pages, haha), so it's a bit of a stretch to judge someone good or bad on their high level reaction to it (e.g. person X is in favor of it, therefore person X is good, person Y is against it, so Y is bad, and so on).

I mean, speaking of that law specifically, it had some pretty onerous stuff but it seemed like a good idea since it would fix the "too big to fail" institutions, which at best it has only partially done (and that's being fairly generous). And in the process it's been rough on lots of smaller banks. So I'm not sure that the congressfolk (regardless of party) that have worked to fix it or remove the bad parts are necessarily in the wrong.

That's what Judge Kavanaugh said

[raymorris]

That's along the lines of what Judge Kavanaugh said in his dissent. He wrote that the rules would have been okay if the applied to ISPs with significant market share in a particular area. The government has a legitimate interest in regulating a monopoly or duopoly or monopoly, sufficient to override the rights of businesses and customers to decide they want a "kid friendly" Internet service or whatever. As written, the rules applied to ALL ISPs, no matter what market power they had, so it was illegal to operate a kid friendly service. Fixing that would have saved the Net Neutrality rules from a 1st amendment challenge, he thought.

The other issue he pointed out is that Congress, who has the sole power to write laws, gave the FCC authority to implement a specific law covering the phone company. The FCC was to handle the details of enforcing the law that Congress wrote. Nowhere did Congress give the FCC authority to unilaterally create net neutrality.

According to Kavanaugh, here's how the Constitution provides for laws, including those related to net neutrality, to be passed:

Congress passes a law saying which principles of net neutrality should be legally required.

Congress identifies which agency they are empowering to enforce that law (FTC? FCC?).

Laws and regulations balance your rights with government interests. More burdensome regulations can be applied to ISPs with over 25% of given market or whatever.
This balances your first amendment right to provide a low-cost service designed for text rather than video, or a kid-safe service, or whatever with the government's interest in regulating businesses that aren't effectively regulated by the free market.

Re: That's what Judge Kavanaugh said

[phantomfive]

Sounds reasonable. Thanks for going to read it.

Re:That's what Judge Kavanaugh said

[HeckRuler]

That sounds better but ignores the reality that god damned near ALL of the USA is under the thumb of a small number of telecoms who refuse to compete with each other and have openly stated they will not encroach on the others territory. If the regulation is applicable to 99% of the cases... then that sort of verbiage is expected. If you DO add some loopholes and exceptions, get read to have 56kps modems count as technically competition against the cable giants. If your kneejerk reaction is "That's not what I meant by competition" then get ready to have the dumbass bumblefuck congressmen start defining technical terms and legislating technical solutions. Which of course never happens. They ask their good friends down in the lobby to hand them some "reasonable rules". Now you've got classic regulatory capture.

Title ii classification was nice and broad and established and neither the congresscritters nor the telcom execs could get their weedly little fingers into it. ...But the president could appoint someone to the FCC that could revert it. Fuck.

Re:Anti-First Amendment

[dbrueck]

Great question, but I think that is actually a slightly different point (see below). The post I replied to suggested that ISP's should never be allowed to censor (which is false) and then from there extrapolated that the SCOTUS nominee is completely unsuitable (which is silly).

As far as protections afforded to carriers, ISPs don't have to be the police and do much, if anything, proactively (they have to respond to DMCA requests, help the cops bust child porn distributors, etc. - but it's almost always reactive), and that protection isn't dependent upon them inspecting the traffic. Further, tons of ISPs specifically market the fact that they do censor content - so not only is it something they are allowed to do (contrary to what that other poster said), it's something they sell as a feature (typically in the form of 'family friendly' or parental browsing controls).

I should add

[rsilvergun]

I'm freaking out over Trump because he's attacking Obamacare. I have a type-I diabetic friend (born with it, symptom's started in his pre-teens) who is alive today because the Medicare expansion covered his insulin. Until then he was fighting with our local state government to get enough meds to live. The affect of the disease means he can't work, he spends 2-3 months out of the year just down and out. He's smart enough (smarter than me) but nobody's going to hire you if you randomly disappear 3 months out of the year and good luck starting your on business. He almost died of a heart attack once... in his 30s.

I've got other family members with medical conditions that will be screwed in the pre-existing coverage protections go away. Trump's allowing a lawsuit against those protections to go unchallenged. And I'm 40, so I've got my own problems too....

I'm not anti-Trump because he says mean things. We could do with less civility in this country. I'm so fucking tired of people stabbing me in the gut, twisting the knife and people telling me it's OK because the guy with the knife is _smilling_ while he kills me and mine...

Re:I should add

[Anonymous Coward]

Then you should be thrilled Obamacare is going to be repealed. Obamacare is responsible for skyrocketing costs and a massive shrinking of services. Hospitals have been forced to close under Obamacare and prices have increased something like 10,000% since it went into effect.

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.

Re:I should add

[Anonymous Coward]

How? By what miracle is the market going to suddenly solve problems that the market hasn't solved in any country, ever?

An axiom: there is no such thing as free-market health insurance for sick people.

Re:I should add

[DogDude]

We could do with less civility in this country.

I hope you and your friend and your family die from your and their pre-existing conditions when they lose their health care. Fuck off and die.

See how "less civility" works? Is that really what you think you want?

Re:I should add

[Powercntrl]

I'm freaking out over Trump because he's attacking Obamacare.

The ACA was a boondoggle from the start, and several states (my home of Florida included) sabotaged it by refusing the subsidies. The only good to come of it was the provision regarding pre-existing conditions.

Until America wises up to the concept of healthcare as a basic human right, I don't see this ever getting properly fixed. The problem is, a good portion of voters don't want to be paying for medical care for "deadbeats"; not realizing that doing so improves society as a whole (if others are healthier, they can be more productive, and the economy will thrive).

Re:I should add

[meglon]

You are truly a fucking idiot.

Prices go up, and always have, on insurance... BUT, they went up slower with the ACA than before. https://www.factcheck.org/2015...

The average employer-sponsored family premium has gone up by $4,154 under Obama, from 2008, before he took office, to 2014, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation’s annual employer survey conducted with the Health Research & Educational Trust. The catch? That’s relatively slow growth for premiums. The RNC may cast it as bad news, but it’s an improvement compared with the growth in premiums before Obama took office.

The ACA also required some basic diagnostics to be done without cost to the consumer. That would be an expansion of service, not a shrinking.

Hospitals weren;t forced to close under the ACA, nor did it cause them to close. What did cause some to close was Republican lead states refusing to adopt the ACA, thereby shorting hospitals (and doctors) in the state those funds.... causing them to have to close. https://health.usnews.com/heal...

Hospitals in the 32 states that expanded Medicaid were about 84 percent less likely to close than hospitals in states that did not expand the government-funded insurance program for the poor or disabled, the study found.

Repealing the ACA will toss 20+ million people off of insurance, and put us right back to where we were with medical/insurance costs ACTUALLY growing fast like they did pre-ACA. I swear, it takes a complete fucking idiot to be as fucking wrong about things as dipshits like you. Tell me, did your mother have any children that weren't born braindead?

Re:I should add

[LynnwoodRooster]

Until America wises up to the concept of healthcare as a basic human right, I don't see this ever getting properly fixed.

I don't think ANYONE is debating whether or not healthcare is a basic human right; what is being debated is how much that healthcare should cost. If you have no insurance, then break your leg, should you be able to buy insurance after the fact to cover at 100% all costs of your broken leg? Or do you bear any responsibility to at least carry some insurance up-front - and if you choose not to carry, should you bear the burden of financial harm because you chose to forgo insurance?

Re:I should add

[AmiMoJo]

Countries that consider healthcare to be a human right pay for it from taxation. It's exactly the same with other human rights like food and shelter.

The moment that you start demanding people pay for their healthcare it ceases to be a human right, because even if they can afford it there is a disincentive, often a strong disincentive, to exercise that right. The humane thing to do is treat them, and if they recover they can pay their taxes like everyone else.

Re:I should add

[blind biker]

First of all let me preface that I am from Europe and I know little about the details of Obamacare. That said, Zach Weinersmith of SMBC fame was discussing the grave financial position in which obamacare has put both him and his wife, sometimes at the beginning of last year. If what he was saying is true, it may be that obamacare was not universally good and that middle income people were, perhaps, penalized substantially?

Re:I should add

[LynnwoodRooster]

We also pay from taxes; fully 40% of all health spending is by the Federal Government. And the Federal Government spends more than just about any other nation on the face of the Earth (in absolute and per capita dollars). That FICA stuff you pay each month? Yeah - that's Federal health insurance for everyone...

The problem is that the Federal Government has screwed up the system so that it penalizes individuals who pay their own premiums. Health insurance spending is deductible by businesses, but unless you spend more than 10% of your income on health insurance, it is NOT deductible by an individual. So the system is financially rigged to ensure that the consumer does NOT pay for insurance premiums (even into Medicare). We have party A (employer) paying party B (insurance company) to pay party C (doctor) solve an issue for party D (consumer). And we're surprised it's screwed up?

Re:I should add

[Ogive17]

How much does Trump's health care cost (or any member of Congress). Who foots the bill for that?

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.

Re:I should add

[Atomic Fro]

This is just ridiculous.
I could be off base in your friends case. If I am ,I apologize, but I will give you my perspective from the point of view of the pharmacy.

If your friend is not working due to medical reasons, he more than qualifies for medicaid. Since we are talking about medicaid coverage, this is a glimpse of what single payer would look like in the US. The state has determined what a sufficient amount of insulin use should be, therefore how much insulin they are going to pay for over a given period. It sounds like he is running afoul of this either in terms of blood testing supplies or the insulin itsself.

In the state of Washington, Medicare's guidelines are much more strict than the state's medicaid guidelines. Getting placed in medicare can be very disastrous short term for patients as now they are limited in brand of supplies and amount. They may have had dosing working in one brand, but the switch in brand is off enough where there has to be more experimentation, thus testing, to get it right. Then you find you can't get any more testing supplies for 2 more weeks unless you pay out of pocket.

As far as fighting with the state to get more supplies/insulin:
The only time the state's guidelines has been insufficient is in two cases:

1.The patient's diet does not meet the restrictions of their disease. I am talking about patients who buy 10 pounds of candy with their $3,000 worth of insulin every 2 weeks.

2. Older people. They aren't quite as sharp and technical as they used to be and have to retest more often due to mistakes or lapse in memory.

The real problem is the cost of the supplies and insulin itself. Mandated insurance / insurance coverage is detrimental to fixing this problem. As college tuition has skyrocketed due ease of access to student loans and government involvement, so has the cost of medication. The only medication that has decreased in price in my time in pharmacy are medications that are not usually covered by insurance. IE Viagra.

Many medications that were in the $5 - $10 range skyrocketed over $100 after Obamacare came into effect. This is mostly hidden from view because all people pay are copays, or nothing at all at pick up. The economics behind the counter are shielded from the general public. When insurance companies raise premiums or copays to cover this cost increase, everyone gets mad at the insurance companies and not at the drug manufacturers fleecing the entire system.

I will say that medicaid is paying the pharmacy $10 for insulin that costs us $80 to get from the wholesaler. We don't get paid to help your friend fight to get this stuff covered, which we do anyway. We lose money dispensing his medication to him. And when he is out and its not covered, chances are a pharmacist gave him a vial under the table. Keep this in mind when you see long lines at the pharmacy counter or it takes a bit longer than expected to get pick up your meds.

Re:I should add

[LynnwoodRooster]

Not a clue about how much it costs (remember, President Obama and the Pelosi/Reid Congress specifically exempted all of themselves from Obamacare), but we definitely pay for it.

Re:I should add

[blind biker]

Middle class people now pay on average a $6,000 deductible before insurance even begins to pay a percentage of their costs.
This is in addition to the premiums, which also have increased well over 100% in many states.

So those who are making claims that premiums haven't gone up, are cherry picking data points, and completely ignoring deductible issues. They are making the claim that coverage is cheaper, while ignoring that getting care is much more expensive.

Plans for families typically are $12,000 to $15,000 a year deductible (in addition to premiums). Before ACA it would have been $1,000 - $3,000.
ACA has destroyed middle class families, but done so in a way that talking points can be made explaining how great it is because people are covered, but not getting actual healthcare. If your family makes over $40k, you get no subsidies but still are on the hook for $15k deductibles.

Thanks, that's really detailed/precise info.

We pounded Afghanistan & Iraq into submission

[rsilvergun]

the only reason we lost 'Nam was the press was paying attention and they wouldn't let us kill civilians indiscriminately. Take a look at the civilian casualties we admitted to for Iraq. It's over 200k. That's just what we admit to. By the time Iraq/Afghanistan came along the military industrial complex and mega corps had control of the media. Problem solved.

See, all it takes is a willingness to use brutality. If you're at the point where you're taking up arms against your own country then I guarantee you that your country is ready, willing and able to use that same brutality against you. Remember, we managed to make torture^XEnhanced Interrogation OK again. If we can do that we can do anything to you and your ragtag band of rebels. This isn't Star Wars, this is reality. And reality is not nice.

Re: Simple trade offs

[Anonymous Coward]

He has a +15 AR-15 of piercing and a #MAGA hat which gives everyone a -20 to hit him. Protip: you can never convenience him otherwise.

Re:Fake Post

[l0n3s0m3phr34k]

He also specifically said the proper road was impeachment, removal from office, and then criminal investigations. There is no "must be a criminal" requirement for impeachment.

Good news

[AHuxley]

Finally some ability to get paper insulated wireline replaced at the community and local level all over the USA.
No waiting for federal NN rules to give everyone a new federal network.

Re:Good news

[AHuxley]

Without past federal NN rules to enforce such state granted NN monopolies? That only a monopoly telco in that state could provide the needed legal NN networks.

Minnesota law review

[GrimSavant]

This has been making the rounds almost immediately after the announcement, though I haven't seen it here, is a Minnesota Law Review article written by Kavanaugh in 2009. In it he argues that the President should be protected from criminal investigations and prosecutions in addition to civil litigation. Here are some of the key exerts:

Congress should consider doing the same, moreover, with respect to criminal investigations and prosecutions of the President. In particular, Congress might consider a law exempting a President—while in office—from criminal prosecution and investigation, including from questioning by criminal prosecutors or defense counsel. Criminal investigations targeted at or revolving around a President are inevitably politicized by both their supporters and critics. As I have written before, “no Attorney General or special counsel will have the necessary credibility to avoid the inevitable charges that he is politically motivated—whether in favor of the President or against him, depending on the individual leading the investigation and its results.” 31 The indictment and trial of a sitting President, moreover, would cripple the federal government, rendering it unable to function with credibility in either the international or domestic arenas. Such an outcome would ill serve the public interest, especially in times of financial or national security crisis.
Even the lesser burdens of a criminal investigation— including preparing for questioning by criminal investigators— are time-consuming and distracting. Like civil suits, criminal investigations take the President’s focus away from his or her responsibilities to the people. And a President who is concerned about an ongoing criminal investigation is almost inevitably going to do a worse job as President.

This seems like it is at the central concern for why Trump chose Kavanaugh in particular, and they haven't denied that they considered Kavanaugh's opinion that the President should be protected from legal inquiry of various kinds. The policy issues around him, including net neutrality, may serve to polarize opinion and political support and opposition, but this seems to be a major overriding issue beyond those given the reality that Trump is the subject of a federal criminal investigation by the special prosecutor, and the questions as to his powers to resist or even eliminate the probe are ripening.

For example, the question as to whether Trump can refuse to answer a subpoena have been regularly raised, including by his own lawyers, which seemed like they would be settled law given that Nixon was forced to relinquish his incriminating tapes under a subpoena. However, a different SCOTUS could overturn such precedent if they so fancy, they have done so before (including recently) despite the invocation of principles such as stare decisis. This is also why the reply that this law review article is advocating congressional action to protect the president is not as convincing as it may seem, since it taking the standpoint of what should be done in response to the law as it existed. When in the position of a justice of the supreme court with a little bit of the so called "judicial activism", the law could be revised if Kavanaugh could find enough like minded fellows to go along with him.

Or more likely, they could make precedent in the unexplored and unsettled areas of law that have a maximalist view of presidential powers, which seems likely given Kavanaugh's background. Ironic given Kavanaugh's role in the Starr investigation and report that led to the impeachment of Bill Clinton.

Re:Minnesota law review

[swillden]

This seems like it is at the central concern for why Trump chose Kavanaugh in particular, and they haven't denied that they considered Kavanaugh's opinion that the President should be protected from legal inquiry of various kinds.

I'm not sure that Kavanaugh's opinion helps Trump as much as he might think it does. All it would take is for Mueller to agree that he cannot indict Trump, and all of Kavanaugh's concerns are addressed. As long as Trump can't be targeted for prosecution, there's no reason he shouldn't be compelled to answer Mueller's questions, much less be able to shut down the investigation. I don't see anything in Kavanaugh's opinion that indicates he believes the president should be above the law.

But if Mueller finds evidence of criminal behavior by Trump and turns it over to Congress, and if the House chooses to impeach Trump and if the Senate convicts him, then he'll be removed from office -- and can be indicted and prosecuted. This allows the investigation to be as non-political as possible, by placing the political decision of what to do about whatever the investigation finds in the hands of Congress.

Re:Minnesota law review

[Talderas]

For example, the question as to whether Trump can refuse to answer a subpoena have been regularly raised, including by his own lawyers, which seemed like they would be settled law given that Nixon was forced to relinquish his incriminating tapes under a subpoena.

The case regarding Nixon was in reference to subpoena duces tecum and not a subpoena ad testificandum which Trump's lawyers are alleging he can refuse.

Re:Minnesota law review

[poached]

But if Mueller finds evidence of criminal behavior by Trump and turns it over to Congress, and if the House chooses to impeach Trump and if the Senate convicts him, then he'll be removed from office -- and can be indicted and prosecuted. This allows the investigation to be as non-political as possible, by placing the political decision of what to do about whatever the investigation finds in the hands of Congress.

W.T. actual F? Congress is apolitical? Bwhahahaha. It's the definition of a political body. Chances of the house actually doing something with Mueller's evidence, is slim to none. A special prosecutor was appointed for the reason to find the truth regardless of political climate, but GOP don't want the truth.

Re:Minnesota law review

[swillden]

But if Mueller finds evidence of criminal behavior by Trump and turns it over to Congress, and if the House chooses to impeach Trump and if the Senate convicts him, then he'll be removed from office -- and can be indicted and prosecuted. This allows the investigation to be as non-political as possible, by placing the political decision of what to do about whatever the investigation finds in the hands of Congress.

W.T. actual F? Congress is apolitical? Bwhahahaha. It's the definition of a political body. Chances of the house actually doing something with Mueller's evidence, is slim to none. A special prosecutor was appointed for the reason to find the truth regardless of political climate, but GOP don't want the truth.

I said this way the investigation is non-political, and that the political decision is places in the hands of Congress -- the political body.

Re:Minnesota law review

[GrimSavant]

That distinction is why Clinton's history with the Starr investigation and the Jones case is important on top of the background with Nixon. Starr subpoenaed Clinton over testimony, and the big pitfalls that Clinton ran into that led to his impeachment were over his testimony. The Jones case was civil as opposed to criminal, sure, and Clinton made a deal for voluntary testimony, but you add those pieces together and it paints a pretty unconvincing picture that Trump could refuse a subpoena for testimony. Of course he still has the Fifth Amendment, despite how politically perilous invoking that might be.

This is also what I was getting at a bit with why Kavanaugh being on SCOTUS and him being a supporter of presidential immunity is important in areas of the law that aren't completely settled. If the previous cases didn't specifically cover subpoenas for testimony in federal criminal cases, but ruled against the president in slightly different contexts, then he could craft a ruling justifying Trump's position that he doesn't have to testify without explicitly overruling the precedent in those cases. He could refuse the spirit of rulings like United States v. Nixon and Clinton v. Jones without overturning them outright, which is a lower bar to clear.

Re:Simple trade offs

[Waffle Iron]

Information has little value when a boot is crushing your skull..........

I'm not talking about you using information. I'm talking about the information the government has on you. That's the real power in this world, and that's what this judge seems to think should be almost unlimited.

With today's environment of mass surveillance, no rag-tag band of rifle-toting "patriots" is even going to get near critical mass before their communications are intercepted, and they're rounded up one-by-one and neutralized. In the mean time, certain leaders manipulate these people and keep them mollified by telling them that their retail firearms are somehow relevant in today's world.

BTW, if you're worried about Venezuela, you should really be thinking about how they got into that pickle: By electing an autocratic leader who had built up a big personality cult with a segment of their population. Who does that remind you of in this country?

Re:We pounded Afghanistan & Iraq into submissi

[whoever57]

the only reason we lost 'Nam was the press was paying attention and they wouldn't let us kill civilians indiscriminately

Watch the Ken Burns documentary on the Vietnam war. It doesn't support your contention that the USA lost because it was restrained in its action. By the time the press started reporting on what was really taking place, the war was already lost. It's just that it was politically impossible to acknowledge the loss until later.

Re:"Selectively modify"

[DarkMagician07]

How is it naive to think that? Comcast punches into people's browsing all the time when they get close to their data cap. You get warning after warning, and then you're told that you've been charged. They already interfere with your HTTP or HTTPS streams to put that info there.

You make requests against their DNS servers, your header information still goes across their network, so they can see the entirety of the URL. How else do you think the whole 3-strikes copyright rule was supposed to work. They can see the necessary unencrypted data that requests the encrypted data to know what's going on.

Re:"Information service"

[DarkMagician07]

The problem is, there's too much money going directly to the FCC and several congress people to make sure that doesn't happen.

Until corps aren't allowed to make the necessary donations that allow them to be treated like people, it won't change.

Re:You misspelled "politicians"

[serviscope_minor]

case in point

PigHogger said:

We all know that Republicans are totally retarded and clueless when it comes to technology

SuperKendall replied:

If you want to look at mastery of using Technology anyone would have to admit Trump comes out vastly on top

That pretty much proves the OP's point. You, an avowed republican, seem to believe that number of likes/followers on twitter somehow equates to understanding tech.

He's right.

[Barny]

This will be great. So if ISPs are akin to cable providers, I get to charge the ISP every time one of their customers uses my internet service, right? That's how cable works: the cable provider pays for the content they are offering.

"Dear user of Comcast Internet. Your provider has not made Youtube available in your area."

USA Costitution vs UK Anarchy

[aberglas]

The USA reverence for the constitution is interesting, as is its ineffectiveness. It sounds like a great idea, to deliberately constrain governments to ensure freedom from future despots. And maybe it has made the USA a much better place than it would be otherwise.

But the comparison with the UK is stark. The UK abolished slavery 60 years before the USA. There is nothing like Civil Forfeiture in the UK (or any other civilized place). No need for a civil rights movement. UK police are embarrassed when they shoot someone.

Australia, in all things, is halfway between the USA and UK. We have a constitution but it says that the Governor General (Queen's representative) is an absolute despot, which nobody believes. Nothing at all about civil liberties. But lots about State's rights vs Federal. That is because by the time it was written (1901) democracy was well established here and a given, and we wanted to stay friends with Britannia, which ruled the seas. And those Kiwis were reluctant to hand power to Canberra.

Re:USA Costitution vs UK Anarchy

[bluegutang]

Half of the US would have liked to abolish slavery before Britain. The other half had an economy which depended on it, unlike Britain's.

The UK has always had (until the last few decades) a very homogeneous population, unlike the US. There was no racial minority for the majority to be afraid of. So there were no racially discriminatory laws which needed a civil rights movement to overturn.

The UK had and has mass surveillance to a greater extent than the US.

Re:Fake Post

[GrimSavant]

The overwhelming problem was with the advocacy for protection from criminal investigations. If a president is impeachable for criminal activity, then how would a reasonable assessment as to whether those crimes occurred unless an investigation took place? If Nixon was held to that low standard, then he likely wouldn't have been impeached, because he could have refused the subpoena for the tapes that incriminated him.

I can see a reasonable argument to be made that a president can't be indicted by federal prosecutors prior to impeachment (on different grounds however), but to make him immune from processes to determine whether he committed wrongdoing is to put him above the law. And the founders were quite clear on their opinions on chief executives who were above the law (spoiler: they were not fans).

Perhaps some understand now...

[Karmashock]

Every time a party is in power, there is a tendency for those in that power to think it will never end. That they hold the whip hand forever.

They exceed their authority... they press beyond the normal bounds of what their office, the law, and their mandate warrants... and people... typically their opposition says "think to the future when you're not in power and I have this power."

This is rarely heeded... and then power changes hands and those that were wielding the power suddenly cry fowl when the same excesses are practiced by their opposition.

It seems to never end much to the shame of the Republic.

Those that cry fowl now... take a moment in humility to remember when you scoffed at those that said you exceeded your own power.

And those that are in power now... take a moment to appreciate that the power will change hands eventually... and everything shall be repeated by your opposition.

Everything else is hypocrisy. There is no moral high ground amoungst the parties in the United States. Both are liars, cheats, pigs feeding at troughs full of hookers and cocaine. Nearly all decisions are no more deeper or profound than the desire of the existing politicians to hold on to power. Both parties sell out their constituents... not even to save their stupid jobs... often just to get a check from a donor... and the sums of these checks... the absurd cheapness with which they are bought would make a whore blush.

I did an analysis involving campaign donations vs government contracts... the ratio of value was about 1:100. That is... a 1 dollar donation roughly netted 100 dollars in contracts... 1 million = 100 million... etc. Estimation is rough but its in that ballpark.

The point of which is this.. be careful that in all your moral outrage that you don't forget which ever side you choose... you have no purity. Both sides are invested with corruption... to their very core.

Perhaps you hold out some belief that one leader or another will save it. Perhaps... the future is tea leaves and pigeon entrails... can't be predicted. But if history is any guide, then any reform will be ephemeral. A flash of purity in an ocean of shit.

And the point of that is this... humility. It is the first and most important step to addressing corruption and error. Humility. A willingness to admit one's faults. An honest reflection. An ability to drop to your knees before something greater... if you value more than merely the power than you must sacrifice for that thing as the EXPENSE of your power. If nothing is worth sacrificing for your power... then what you worship is that power.

The best of science, law, programming, philosophy, etc all has this quality in common. Humility before our fallibility as humans.

And all that gets thrown out the window if we go full radical holy war with our stupid simplistic politics.

there are hundreds of millions of people in this country. Half of them voted one way and half the other.

Any way you count it the nation has been divided for a long long time. Rather than one faction or another attempting to dominate the other by jamming its desires down the other's throat... perhaps we should see what we agree upon. On that which we agree upon... we have law. That which is not agreed upon... perhaps don't try to impose that until we have "actual" agreement. Not some procedural trick. Not I won an election by 2 percent so I'm god emperor... BOTH parties are doing this... and it is ripping us apart.

You want things half the country opposes? Willing to rip the country apart for it? I don't think there is any wise person that actually expects to live here that would take that deal.

Restraint and humility. It is time and past time that real honest genuine compromises be made... pacts be set down that will be honored in good faith.

Because all the agreements of the last 30 or 40 years have been betrayed. It can't go on.

Re: Perhaps some understand now...

[Karmashock]

Sure, Comrade. After the great revolution there will finally be social justice.

You people keep making the same mistakes and not learning.

Re: Perhaps some understand now...

[Karmashock]

You wanted me to know that "you" an AC has no regard for me?

Do you not see the irony in your statement? And the fact that you didn't then and probably even after it has pointed out to you still don't... says all I need to know about you.

The comic hypocrisy of your statements which goes completely over your head renders you a laughable source of judgement.

I know I know... You're mad. But your lack of emotional control doesn't give weight to your opinions but rather detracts from them.

Try harder to be an adult and maybe the other adults will treat you like one.

Re:Perhaps some understand now...

[Karmashock]

Point out the exact incidence of abuse of power you wish to reference and I'll find an analog in other house.

Both parties have been exceeding authority in many spheres. Which excess bothers you specifically.

Cite it specifically so I can respond.

I believe I've been sufficiently clear. A clear and direct response would be appreciated.

Re:Perhaps some understand now...

[Karmashock]

To a foaming radical like yourself, anyone that cautions restraint, reflection, and humility must seem like the enemy.

If you read my post you'll find I laid criticism at both parties and said that to heal the divide it would require humility on both sides to come to common ground.

Now if THAT statement offends you, then I'm pretty comfortable labling YOU as a radical that is actually part of the problem.

The guy asking for reflection and humility before our common mistakes and passions can hardly be cited as the radical.

Your position can't even be a difference of opinion. You're just patiently wrong.

You're also following me from thread to thread, posting under AC, not contributing to discussions, and JUST throwing out a bunch of stupid insults.

What you probably haven't grasped because you're clearly a pretty simple creature... is that you're actually making me look better by making such a giant ass of yourself.

Here you'll jump on a couple sock accounts and down vote me. None of that means anything to me and the fact that you're going to do that further validates my position.

You're garbage. Be better.

Re: Perhaps some understand now...

[Karmashock]

You're just responding with word salad now.

I point out an obvious illogical argument you're making and you respond that I'm being unethical.

That's moronic.

Re: Perhaps some understand now...

[Karmashock]

Give an example.

Also, because you're AC how can I or anyone else question YOUR posting history to see YOUR bias?

Do you see the hypocrisy in an AC criticizing a NON-AC's posting history?

Of course you don't, because you're an idiot.

Seriously, why don't you tell me your non-AC name on this server and then I can quickly go through your posting history to see if YOU are free of bias.

Rather doubt you'd pass your own stupid test. Which is probably why you'll refuse my challenge. You know you'd fail. And that makes things even easier for me because you can just fail by default. So easy.

Re: Perhaps some understand now...

[Karmashock]

Can't provide counter examples unless you provide a specific abuse of the trump administration you want to talk about.

I'll probably easily find something in the Obama admin that matches it and you probably know that... which is why you're afraid to play the game.

You know you're wrong... and you have to know I know you're wrong as well. So why struggle, baby? Its already over.

Re: Simple trade offs

[meglon]

Why are fucking morons like you intent on strawman arguments? Or is it you're just to stupid to understand reality?

Re:Simple trade offs

[meglon]

Yeh, but we've already established you're a fucking idiot.

Re:Fake Post

[LynnwoodRooster]

Nixon wasn't impeached.

Re:Because there's a lot of right wing people on /

[andydread]

I'm a gun enthusiast and a tech enthusiast among other things. I am a liberal. I'm pro separation of church and state, pro government regulation, pro choice, pro birth control, pro-union, etc, When I hear my fellow liberals say they want to put me in prison because I own a specific rifle and attachments for it that they do not like and have know real knowledge of it makes me want to vote Republican.

Re:Fake Post

[GrimSavant]

Please don't be obtuse. Nixon resigned because he was about to be impeached and convicted, and he knew it. The articles of impeachment passed out of the judiciary committee with clear majorities, in a couple of weeks he was gone.

If Nixon was protected from criminal investigation, and if United States v. Nixon wasn't a unanimous ruling against Nixon's demands for unrestricted Presidential immunity from the judicial process but instead went the other way as Kavanaugh would prefer, then Nixon would have been in a far safer position to defend against his removal.

If a president is immune from investigation and scrutiny, then it is far more difficult for anyone to contain a criminal president, impeachment is an impotent check if must be carried out in the dark. And well, if what you really want is an unconstrained criminal president (such as Nixon was at his very worst), then I have no patience for you.

Re:Simple trade offs

[Anonymous Coward]

+ firm supporter of the 2nd amendment, without which all other amendments become moot

-1: Naive idiot.

Information is power.

Small arms are *not* power.

Information is power only in the sense that it lets you expend your power much more effectively, but without an initial form of power information is useless. For example, if I know that a massive drug deal is going to go down near the dumpsters in an alley behind my house tomorrow, I can't do much to stop it without a number of armed men at my back, be they the police or a rival gang.

With today's environment of mass surveillance, no rag-tag band of rifle-toting "patriots" is even going to get near critical mass before their communications are intercepted, and they're rounded up one-by-one and neutralized. In the mean time, certain leaders manipulate these people and keep them mollified by telling them that their retail firearms are somehow relevant in today's world.

Gun sales are through the roof ever since all this talk started about repealing the second amendment, and the more people get picked off in your scenario, the more people will get involved to stop it. Such weapons might be at a severe disadvantage when pitted against military weapons and tech, but if it gets to the point that the military is being called upon to subdue civilians you can bet that there will be plenty of defectors. Why do you think we're arming autonomous drones? Another interesting point is that many of those "rifle-toting patriots" are veterans preparing themselves for the worst-case scenario, and you can bet that they're well aware of what the military is capable of, and what sheer numbers are capable of.

No man

[MoarSauce123]

Kavanaugh opposes everything a modern society is built on...and given his life expectancy he will ruin the US for the next 30 years or more. I know that the Senate has to approve, but with Senate Republicans folding like cheap tents it is clear how the vote will go. Thanks to everyone who voted for Trump for ruining all our lives! I hope you enjoy your unemployment due to the job cuts caused by Trump's trade war.

Re:Update yourselves...

[Minupla]

Get rid of all that Queen bullshit, and purge biometrics and all the kowtowing to american IP interests you guys have passed and I will personally move up there.

Get rid of the queen? That would mean spending millions of dollars setting up our own head of state to replace a person who is solely a figurehead. And it risks giving an oversized ego to our head of state. Looking at other countries which have gone this route (US, Russia, France, etc) the track record has been spotty. Our current model allows us to essentially dispense with executive power (The PM can be ousted at any time by a simple non-confidence vote of Parliament, which sends us back to the polls, a perfectly normal and relatively common exercise, as opposed to impeachment or guillotines. Not seeing the upside, sorry :).

Until then, Canada is just diet America with slightly different liberties but swirling its way down the same giant drain, just at 0.8x-1.6x the exchange rate :)

So when the exchange rate was in Canada's favor a few years ago did that mean the US was swirling its way down the drain? Checked out the Euro lately? (.8 EU to the USD when I checked just now). I'd expect your leadership to not agree with that metric of greatness. ;).

In seriousness, I will grant you that the wiliness to bow to the US has been a historical issue. We may be breaking that habit now, given the current leadership. Consider that for a moment. A country that has historically been mocked as the US'd younger sibling is standing up and (politely) telling you that you've gone too far. Worth thinking about.

Re:Fake Post

[LynnwoodRooster]

Not being obtuse, simply being correct. Nixon wasn't impeached. Fact. He had the decency to resign rather than be impeached - that was at least one noble thing the man did.

Against road neutrality

[iTrawl]

Let's take this one step further: end road neutrality.

Deciding whether and how to transmit nytimes.com and deciding whether and how to transmit "The New York Times" dead tree bundle are not meaningfully different for First Amendment purposes.

I can see a problem with my argument, but it can be solved: privatise all roads and take the government out of them. Let the free market handle it. /sarcasm

Citation needed

[i286NiNJA]

Comcast proxies your SSL traffic? I've never heard of that. I had them once and my ex did 1.5x the cap every month and the only reason I knew was because there was a warning on our bill. I really need a citation on that.

I'll bet he also does not like

[p51d007]

Marsh mellows, butterflies, ice cream, baby animals, and on and on. so called net neutrality, is just another way for government, to CENSOR the web, by restricting what content can be put on the web. There isn't anything "neutral" about it. Let the ISP's control it, it's there network in the first place. If they get stupid, and probably will at some point, people will move to a different ISP. If the government controls it, it will be a mess, like 99.9% of everything government does.

In transit?

[shaitand]

Seriously, that is the great firewall of China, that means altering what a news reporter is saying, in flight. This would give the ISPs not only the right to control speed and quality of access but to literally rewrite fake news into the content on the fly!

Re:Fake Post

[Talderas]

If a president is impeachable for criminal activity, then how would a reasonable assessment as to whether those crimes occurred unless an investigation took place?

A President may be impeached over a conviction treason, bribery, or committing high crimes and misdemeanors. High crimes and misdemeanors is a classical term which references crimes made only because of the office. To proceed through an impeachment the House of Representatives should convene a committee to perform a congressional investigation, not criminal investigation, into the allegations. If that committee finds sufficient evidence to believe that the President acted in a manner that warrants impeachment then they can refer Articles of Impeachment to the floor of the House.

This is the only proper course for impeachment of a President. Criminal investigations by the DoJ is idiotic at best and unconstitutional at worst as it would necessarily setup a fourth branch of the government that has virtually no checks and balances since the DoJ only reports up to the President.

As for the subpoenaed tapes. Congress can subpoena the executive branch for evidence related to investigations they are conducting. This is well established precedent and it is different from issuing a subpoena for the President to testify. Additionally, there's a 8-0 SCOTUS ruling that executive privilege isn't broad and all encompassing and that the courts can be involved to determine if a President rejecting a subpoena by exerting executive privilege is valid or not.

Re:Simple trade offs

[blindseer]

Small arms are *not* power.

That is demonstrably false. If small arms granted no power then police officers would not carry them. If small arms granted no power then governments would not take them from their subjects.

Let's assume what you say is true, that small arms in the hands of citizens do not prevent a tyranny from abusing the population. What that means is a free people would have access to "large arms" (or whatever the term is for things that are bigger than small arms). I hear this all the time, the government could wipe out anyone it wants from 5 miles up by dropping precision guided bombs therefore your puny little pistol is worthless and you don't need it. It's true that a government with access to aerial bombardment can level large numbers of people with little risk to itself. If they have access to precision weapons then they could conceivably kill an individual from afar. What this does though is leave the government with the option of kill or not kill, there's no in between. It also leaves the government with a very expensive option of kill or not kill, because a guided munition is not cheap.

People are worthless to the government if they do not produce. Dead people don't produce. Only slaves produce. To enslave a people means getting more out than is put in to enslave them. To conquer a people means not to kill them but to achieve an agreement to have peace. Neither can be done from 5 miles up and a payload of bombs. This means boots on the ground. When it comes to enslaving a people or conquering them that means getting up close and personal. Maybe not to where you can see the whites of their eyes or smelling their breath but it does mean getting close enough that there is an option other than kill or not kill, an option of speaking to them, an option of where they can shoot back with a rifle.

It's because of small arms that Afghanistan is the "land where empires go to die". Many governments tried to conquer or enslave Afghanistan but failed because the people there figured out how to fashion small arms from forges built in caves.

If small arms granted no power then the petty little tyrants in the US Congress would not be making up excuses to disarm the people. They claim by disarming people they'd reduce crime but this is also demonstrably false. There are states with very little controls on what small arms people may carry, and how they carry them, and crime is not a problem. Where crime is a problem in the USA is where gun laws are most restrictive. Did crime create the gun laws or did the gun laws create the crime? That's irrelevant since there is little evidence that gun laws have any correlation to crime. Gun control is not crime control, gun control is people control. If the politicians want to stop crime then they go after criminals. If politicians want to control the people then they go after the guns.

Unless they are big ISPs, he wrote

[raymorris]

He wrote that you have a right to buy or sell a kid-safe internet service, or whatever kind of service you want, UNLESS the ISP in question is a major player in a particular market.

If there are one or two or three big ISPs in a city, the government has sufficient interest in regulating those more strictly than a start-up alternative. He wrote that the rules would have passed first amendment muster if they had applied to ISPs with significant market share, say 25%. "Market power", he wrote, the ability to make decisions that customers don't like, but there isn't much that customers can do about it. If customers can't easily choose a different service, then government can step in, he thought.

Under the NN rules, if you live in a city with Comcast and CenturyLink, it would be illegal for you to offer a kid-safe internet service. Kavanaugh said that went to far. The NN requirements are only justified for ISPs with market power , the monopolies and duopolies, unless the government shows some reason it should be illegal for a small company to offer a $5 educational internet plan that doesn't stream HD video.

Re:Unless they are big ISPs, he wrote

[q_e_t]

Many ISPs in the UK offer tools to make (or attempt to make) things safe for kids that parents can turn on and off. That seems to be more useful than a 'kid-safe ISP' as often kids live with adults who like to look at things not meant for kids.

Re:Unless they are big ISPs, he wrote

[Qzukk]

it would be illegal for you to offer a kid-safe internet service

Actually, it would be trivial to eliminate this problem. Simply put, you sell "Kids On Line" and make no claims about it being "the internet" and everyone is happy. Be sure to mail out plenty of floppies and cds with 12 free hours of service, it's a proven winner!

Re:We pounded Afghanistan & Iraq into submissi

[orgenegro]

I feel quite certain that the public opinion would be even more problematic in a civil war than in the Vietnam War, even if there is military industrial complex control of the media.

Re:You misspelled "politicians"

[tbannist]

That pretty much proves the OP's point. You, an avowed republican, seem to believe that number of likes/followers on twitter somehow equates to understanding tech.

I would just like to take this time to point out that, Obama has twice as many followers on Twitter as Trump does.

The difference is Trump uses Twitter a lot, and Obama not so much. The thing is this does not represent any particular mastery of technology, Trump is a loud mouth blow hard and he basically uses Twitter as a megaphone. For the way he uses it, the technology is being put to the same use as shouting in a crowded room.

Why are you looking at meaningless metrics?

[SuperKendall]

I would just like to take this time to point out that, Obama has twice as many followers on Twitter as Trump does.

Neither of you seem to understand. It's not the size of your follower count, it's how you use it.

It's easy to see how Obama got way more followers, since basically he's the head of a cult of personality - not any different than any big Hollywood star.

But Trump - it doesn't matter how many followers Trump has, because lots of stuff Trump tweets is widely repeated (including the press) and way more actually READ than anything Obama ever tweeted. So he's much more of a true Influencer (in the Twitter sense of the word) than just about anyone on Twitter, certainly vastly more than Obama.

Trump has also accomplished a LOT more via Twitter than I would say anyone on the planet, can you seriously say with a straight face that Trump did not basically tweet his way to being president? Obama used many channels for that, including the same sophisticated leverage of Facebook that Trump used, but not Twitter, not in any real sense. It would be madness to claim otherwise. Not to mention Trump goading North Korea into nuclear negotiations via Twitter.

You can ignore Trumps leverage of Twitter all you like, but it is to your detriment as you will continue to fail to understand events as they unfold.

I think your basic problem is you have either way too much hate for Trump or love for Obama (or both) to understand anything. I feel about the same about Obama as Trump, so I am just looking at this all from a sheer tactical level, not basing analysis on emotion as others seem to be doing...

Re:Why are you looking at meaningless metrics?

[serviscope_minor]

Neither of you seem to understand. It's not the size of your follower count, it's how you use it.

If you think that's mastery of technology (your words) then you should be supporting Kim Kardashian for president.

Re:Why are you looking at meaningless metrics?

[SuperKendall]

If you think that's mastery of technology (your words) then you should be supporting Kim Kardashian for president.

Holy shit, if you do NOT think Kim K of all people has a mastery of technology, you should just hang up you tech badge right now because you understand NOTHING.

We were just talking politicians but Kim K has a vastly better mastery of technology than you or I mere programmers. We UNDERSTAND it better. But mastery? Come On.

I wasn't even talking about WHO should be president, I was simply pointing out who is actually a master of technology and who is not. It's you political losers who want to make it about something it is not.

Re:Why are you looking at meaningless metrics?

[serviscope_minor]

Oh yes, my mistake I forgot you're one of those rabid trumpanzees so you don't seem to use the same meanings for words as regular people. Either that or you play stupid word games to try to "prove" that Trump is indeed your god-emperor.

Imagine it's a different topic. Here's what the conversation would sound like.

Subject: FAA regulating drones
You: Of course Trump knows best, the god-emperor has mastered the ability of flight.
Me: WTF Trump can't fly! No human can.
You: He goes in aeroplanes, that's flying.
Me: That's not "trump mastering the ability of flight". Even by that definition he can't fly he has no pilots license.
You: So? You don't need a pilots license to master flight. He has a private jet and can pay for someone to fly him anywhere at any time. That's more mastering of flight than any pilot.
Me: you're a moron.

So basically I'm saying your definitions which no one else seems to follow are deeply stupid. The fact he's a world-expert at spreading lies on twitter does not mean he has "mastered technology" and therefore be supremely suited to rule on Network Neutrality.

You know, network neutrality? The entire topic of the story.

You're either very stupid if you think being good on twitter in any way reflects on hos knowledge of NN or you are actively trying to deceive. My bet is on the former but I won't rule out the latter because pointless word games where you rapidly flip between different meanings isn't beneath you.

Judges can't make laws but they can break them

[rsilvergun]

The Supreme court could just declare each and every law they don't like unconstitutional. It's easy to do with the 10th amendment. Heck, they're basically making laws at that point since no law will pass that they oppose.

If you stack the courts with pro-corporate judges expect pro-corporate laws to be the only ones that survive. Once you accept that the only question is are you OK with that.

Re:Simple trade offs

[Waffle Iron]

You go on and on, completely missing the fact that in today's world, government information about you completely neutralizes any ability for you to use arms against it. That's why rights regarding limits on government surveillance are orders of magnitude more important than the 2nd amendment you keep persevering about.

But do you care if this judge thinks that unfettered mass surveillance is OK? I doubt it. Even your sig indicates that you've drunk so much Kool Aid that you probably can't even comprehend what I'm taking about.

(You should also note that Afghanistan has now been occupied and run by a US-installed puppet government for over 15 years. How long until these local patriots start "winning"?)

Re:Simple trade offs

[Gilgaron]

Eh, the phalanx and a cavalry wing used to be pretty great too. With automation comes the devaluing of labor, and if labor isn't valuable you can drone the serfs into submission if you're feeling generous or into extinction if they're being difficult. We probably aren't quite there yet, as it is still cheaper to control populations with propaganda, but small arms aren't relevant and won't help against someone willing to use total war doctrines.

There's a much bigger problem with Kavanaugh.

[GameboyRMH]

A much bigger problem with Brett Kavanaugh is that he's a shitty judge who has a frighteningly amateurish understanding of the US' legal system. One nervous-laughable misunderstanding in particular is very appealing to wannabe-dictator President Trump: Kavanaugh believes that the US president has a power similar to the collective power of the US supreme court, and can declare any law unconstitutional on a whim:

https://www.vox.com/policy-and...

Re:We pounded Afghanistan & Iraq into submissi

[burningcpu]

I wasn't speaking of only the American perspective of these conflicts. Your armchair general-ing is impressive - if only American had your leadership, we'd control the world!

Re:Fake Post

[shaitand]

The President can simply pardon himself, becoming president makes you immune to criminal punishment for anything done prior to and up to the end of your term. Impeachment however, does not require criminal punishment. If people think he is so bad, impeach him, is getting the pound of flesh from punishing him beyond that really so important?

Re:Fake Post

[shaitand]

Bingo.

Re:Fake Post

[Green Mountain Bot]

I was going to go with "presenting a non-sequitur to distract from the point being made too well for me to argue against".

Re:"Information service"

[Green Mountain Bot]

I'm not at all convinced that any such definition is necessary. After all, what exactly is an ISP if NOT a communication provider?

Re:Simple trade offs

[Waffle Iron]

It certainly makes it more difficult to fight against, but there are only so many people that they can neutralize without the public finding out before they have the entire population against them,

And how is this population going to organize themselves into a credible fighting force? On facebook?

Because big bad corporations, historically

[raymorris]

It's interesting how we got to this point.

Years ago it was sold as "business records" - the government could demand records from businesses without a warrant or any other standard, just demand records for no reason because they are getting it from a "big bad corporation". Nobody cared, nobody objected because corporations (groups of people) are bad, m'kay.

That established the principle that "business records" don't have the same protection. The phone company's "business records" include records of which calls they completed, for whom. Records from cell phone carriers about which customers were connected to which towers have been classified as "business records". It's okay because they are getting data from those big bad corporations, not from individuals, the theory goes.

Not a search? Well then, I think it's fair game.

[HeckRuler]

"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."

Someone get his metadata and expose his daily routine, who all his contacts are, and who he calls the most, where he frequents, and where he travels to.

Let's see how well he likes "NOT being searched". He can enjoy the full benefit of privacy, but I guess none of this is private. So let's have at it. Money says there's plenty enough rope in there to hang himself.

Re:We pounded Afghanistan & Iraq into submissi

[HeckRuler]

This is insightful?

1) He's arguing that we SHOULD have "killed civilians indiscriminately".

2) He thinks the sectarian violence in Iraq was all US troops. Dude, it was open warfare between the Shiites and the Sunnis. We let it happy by knocking off the only guy keeping them from going at it, but that wasn't our troops shooting civilians. That wasn't the plan. We didn't want 300,000 dead civvies.

we managed to make torture^XEnhanced Interrogation OK again.

Only for half the populace in the USA. It was, and still is, reviled by the other half along with the rest of the world.

Re:Anti-First Amendment

[Rick Schumann]

So your ISP has the right to decide that you can't read news from some sources, only from ones they approve of? Do they also have the right to sift through your email when you send it and reject any items that they don't like, like for instance anything derogatory about their company (Hi Joe, John here Comcast really sucks!)? Or you're trying to access political websites and they block you? You're saying all that would be okay?

And kids laugh, show mom how to reboot the router

[raymorris]

Yeah ISPs here offer those too, they are client-side filters. Mom may or may not realize it only affects the computer she installs it on, not the tablet or anything else. Kids laugh at that software, while showing mom how to reboot the router.

Anyway, Kavanaugh figures it should be legal for you to get some kind of specialized internet service if you want to, if the provider isn't a major player. (Comcast etc can be subject to more regulation, he says).

Is anyone surprised?

[HiThere]

I didn't know in exactly what ways he would be against individual rights, but did anyone expect Trump to nominate someone who wasn't abominable? The question is, does he have any good points? If so, what are they.

Every Supreme Court Justice pick I've ever studied has had abominable points. Some have had a number of decent points also. So what are his good points?

Re:Anti-First Amendment

[dbrueck]

So your ISP has the right to decide that you can't read news from some sources, only from ones they approve of?

If they are a private company and are up front about what they are doing to the traffic, then yes, absolutely (and yes to all of the other things you listed). Would I be their customer? Of course not not. But the point is whether or not the *government* can or should try to prohibit that company from operating that way, and the answer is 'no'.

I'm giving that private company money and they are providing a service to me, a private consumer - both sides are willingly choosing to do business together. It's really that simple.

Two questions for you:

(a) On what specific legal grounds could the government say that an ISP can *not* censor traffic? (hint: you can't use the 1st Amendment, since it's a restriction on the government, not on a private business)

(b) Let's say I decide to start an email provider company called NoSandwhichEmail. where the #1 feature I advertise is that out of all the emails that land in your inbox, we will delete any of them that contain the word "sandwich". It's a terrible business idea, and is sure to fail, but does the government have the right to *prohibit* me from starting that company and trying to get customers? Why?

Re:Anti-First Amendment

[Rick Schumann]

Oh yeah? What if you have NO CHOICE in what ISP you have? That's more people than you're comfortable to admit, I'm sure; let's say you're someone who has no choice except to have NO Internet or have Internet that has things excluded for it for no good reason other than it suits them. You still okay with that?

Re:Anti-First Amendment

[dbrueck]

Oh yeah? What if you have NO CHOICE in what ISP you have? That's more people than you're comfortable to admit, I'm sure; let's say you're someone who has no choice except to have NO Internet or have Internet that has things excluded for it for no good reason other than it suits them. You still okay with that?

I'm assuming that, like me, you're interested in real dialog here, so please do me the courtesy of answering the questions I asked.

Once we've discussed those then I'll be happy to answer this question - and even, gasp!, admit to lots of people having poor choices when it comes to internet providers. :)

Re:Anti-First Amendment

[Rick Schumann]

(a) I'm not a lawyer let alone an expert in Constitutional Law so how do you expect me to answer this other than "It's just wrong of them"?
(b) See above.

Re:Fake Post

[GrimSavant]

You are making pretty much the same arguments Nixon's lawyer made in United States v. Nixon, that the only thing that the president had to answer to is impeachment proceedings and that the courts should not interfere with internal matters of the executive branch:

The President wants me to argue that he is as powerful a monarch as Louis XIV, only four years at a time, and is not subject to the processes of any court in the land except the court of impeachment.

That didn't work. It was ruled 8-0 that he had to turn over the tapes to the special prosecutor (who was within the executive branch) and the federal district court. And the ruling granted limited executive privilege, but not as protection against criminal inquiry.

There's a reason why Kavanaugh was primarily arguing for presidential immunity in 2009 as policy matter to be taken up congress: because it didn't exist in the law as it was. Your position is not novel, it has been tried and failed, and Nixon quite clearly showed that impeachment was a more effective and proper check on Presidential criminality when aided by more than just Article I powers. Even Trey Gowdy, a fairly strong loyalist to Trump and the Republicans in the House of Representatives, said as roughly as much in April:

"I can't say what's in the universe of witnesses we have not talked to," he continued. "And I have always maintained I am awaiting the Mueller investigation. They get to use a grand jury. They have investigative tools that we don't have."

"Executive branch investigations are just better than congressional ones. So we found no evidence of collusion. Whether or not it exists or not, I can't speak to, because I haven't interviewed the full panoply of witnesses."

Re:Anti-First Amendment

[dbrueck]

Well, the reason I asked is because you've been asserting very strongly that it's wrong (so wrong, in fact, that a SCOTUS nominee is automatically disqualified). But I think you are conflating something you personally dislike with things the government should force on others, and they really are two different things.

Here are the answers to my questions:

(a) Truth be told, the government doesn't really have legal justification it can use to tell a private company that it can't censor traffic on its own network. Put another way, it's completely legal for a private ISP to provide e.g. content filters. The Constitution provides citizens protection from the *government* censoring; it does not provide any protection between two private parties (indeed, censoring is itself a form of freedom of speech).

I can't stress this point enough, so lemme repeat it: censorship (generally speaking) is not illegal, it's not prohibited, it's not even necessarily wrong. So when you hear of censorship occurring, it's improper to automatically assume it's some evil thing. You have to wrap your mind around that fact.

What the Constitution does is say the *government* can't censor people's speech. And even then, there are many cases where the freedom of speech is still curtailed (bleeped naughty words on TV, internet filters in some libraries, outlawing of child porn, you can't yell 'fire' in a crowded theater, etc.).

(b) No, the government has no right whatsoever to prevent me from starting that stupid company because I'm censoring. That's not the government's job or role. Just because something is a terrible idea, it doesn't mean that we need the government to step in and police it. This is an example where the market will fix the problem and simple run my business into the ground. But it's 100% legal and allowed for me to start such a business.

To recap: private businesses are completely free to censor stuff - an ISP can block certain sites, a TV station can choose to not show certain programs, a newspaper is not obligated to print every story or every letter to the editor, I can hang up on telemarketers, Yelp can erase reviews if it wants, if you run a message board you can indiscriminately erase posts and threads on a whim, and on and on and on. You may not like it, but that's the way it is (and I assure you that on the whole it is a very good thing).

The point is that your original statement of "ISPs should NEVER have the right to censor traffic" is - no offense - wrong.

I'm willing to continue the discussion, but do you dispute the above at all? Because if we're not on the same page at this point, my answer to your question is not going to make any sense to you. To be clear, I'm not asking if you like how things are, I'm asking if you assert that the current reality is different than what I've explained above.

Re:Anti-First Amendment

[Rick Schumann]

'Censorship' can be done by anyone regardless of whether it's a company or a government it's only illegal if it's a government and it's against it's constitution -- but censorship in ANY form is a slippery slope and should NOT be encouraged. You can disagree with that philosophy if you like but you will not change my mind about it so don't even try.

Re:Anti-First Amendment

[Areyoukiddingme]

the government doesn't really have legal justification it can use to tell a private company that it can't censor traffic on its own network.

The government has the legal justification to tell a private company that it can't censor traffic on its network because its network is not private. It is utterly dependent on public rights of way, it is at least nominally available to each and every member of the general public (unless they don't feel like servicing your area, despite getting massive tax breaks for 27 years to do so), and it is fundamentally a public utility because of the physical and financial realities of how it is deployed.

Your original statement that "ISPs should ALWAYS have the right to censor traffic" is wrong.

Until AT&T pays the $400 billion in back taxes they owe for failing to live up to their part of the National Infrastructure Initiative bargain, until I can charge AT&T for every inch of their lines that cross my property for every month they're there, AT&T's network is not private enough to claim exemption from regulation that would prevent them from breaking the fucking Internet.

The Internet as it existed, with de facto neutrality, because ISPs had not yet had the nerve to try to break it for profit, is so valuable, to the tune of $500 billion annually to the US economy, that it must be protected as a public good. If you really believe their nominal status as private entities makes them immune from regulation, then I will advocate for seizing their assets and nationalizing every last one of them, forcibly removing every ISP from the media conglomerate into which it has been sucked. It's that important that they not be allowed to break it. For more money.

Re:We pounded Afghanistan & Iraq into submissi

[jittles]

the only reason we lost 'Nam was the press was paying attention and they wouldn't let us kill civilians indiscriminately

Watch the Ken Burns documentary on the Vietnam war. It doesn't support your contention that the USA lost because it was restrained in its action. By the time the press started reporting on what was really taking place, the war was already lost. It's just that it was politically impossible to acknowledge the loss until later.

Read the Pentagon Papers. The US government knew that the war was lost long before we ever even seriously considered pulling out.

Where do you see that? Section IV of the rule says

[raymorris]

Section IV of the Rule defines affected providers as:

"establishments primarily engaged in operating and/or providing access to
transmission facilities and infrastructure that they own and/or lease for the transmission of voice, data,
text, sound, and video using wired communications networks. Transmission facilities may be based on a
single technology or a combination of technologies."

https://www.npr.org/sections/t...

Where do you see a "don't called it 'the internet'" clause in the Rule?

Re:Where do you see that? Section IV of the rule s

[Qzukk]

I'm saying it would be trivial to add that clause.

No different than going to the store to buy a pack of sliced Pasteurized Processed Dairy Product.

My personal favorite denial of care

[rsilvergun]

was that if you ever had your insurance cover acne medication and got skin cancer they'd claim your acne was in fact cancerous lesions and declare it a pre-existing condition.

Re:And kids laugh, show mom how to reboot the rout

[q_e_t]

To be fair, I don't recall there being any options on my router that looked to be related to child safety, but neither do I know if the tools my ISP offers are purely client-side as I don't have kids. I'd make any kid of mine use Linux anyway, so the tools probably wouldn't work. :)

Headline could be corporatist spin...

[Uberbah]

...but who would be interested in such tripe? Aside from present company.

So a conservative-leaning judge supports free markets

The free market where ISP's suddenly start paying rent on what used to be right-of-ways? And returning hundreds of billions in government subsidies and research?

broad application of the First Amendment

Double-charging and denying speech is a first amendment issue on what planet?

Re:Anti-First Amendment

[dbrueck]

I think we're on the same page as to what the problem is and just disagree on the solution.

Re:Anti-First Amendment

[dbrueck]

It is utterly dependent on public rights of way, it is at least nominally available to each and every member of the general public (unless they don't feel like servicing your area, despite getting massive tax breaks for 27 years to do so), and it is fundamentally a public utility because of the physical and financial realities of how it is deployed.

This is true for some types of networks but isn't universally true (just in the past year in my area - which is far from being a big metro area - added 2 different wireless providers. And this is before the widespread deployment of 5G and is in addition to copper and fiber).

Until AT&T pays the $400 billion in back taxes they owe for failing ...[snip] ...

On the part about how screwed things up are we are very much in agreement. But look at it this way: some of these companies got in bed with the government and now we're trying to figure out how to untangle the mess. If for no other reason than this do I have trouble with the idea that even more government entanglement (dictating how they are run, more regulation, even nationalizing them) is the solution.

Public utilities can sometimes be a good solution, but it is so tricky to get right that it's probably a last resort option. A lot of the problem seems rooted in the fact that they become a monopoly, but one that is government sanctioned, so you have this weird situation where you're dealing with the anti-competitive downsides of a monopoly and the bureaucratic downsides of the government - it's a mess that resists fixing.

The government could instead work to roll back anti-competitive legislation that has prevented municipal ISPs to form. Or it could force AT&T (and others) to pay what they owe and use that money on incentives for providing better access to under-served areas. There are many things the government could try before getting further intertwined with running companies - a solution that pretty much always leads to sub-optimal results.

Re:Anti-First Amendment

[dbrueck]

'Censorship' can be done by anyone regardless of whether it's a company or a government it's only illegal if it's a government and it's against it's constitution

Ok, so we agree that ISPs do in fact have the right to censor. Cool.

but censorship in ANY form is a slippery slope and should NOT be encouraged

I take it you don't have any children. :)

You can disagree with that philosophy if you like but you will not change my mind about it so don't even try.

You have your right to your opinion and I'm not threatened by that, but I *am* curious about this philosophy. Say a company came into your town and build video billboards all along the road to your work, and then used them to play videos of graphic beastiality. It's safe to say that a large segment of the population of your town would object to this. But from what you've written, it sounds like you'd be on the side of this company, correct?

Judge Kavanaugh ignores consolidation & last m

[Uberbah]

Those two factors ensure that Americans generally have only one crappy choice for cable or one crappy choice for DSL. Thus, net neutrality rules that applied to all.

As written, the rules applied to ALL ISPs, no matter what market power they had, so it was illegal to operate a kid friendly service.

Illegal for parents to opt-in to a kids portal? [citation needed]

Fixing that would have saved the Net Neutrality rules from a 1st amendment challenge, he thought.

He's a corporatist looking for any excuse to work his ideology into his rulings - he'll be at home setting next to the other hacks on the court.

my, what a nice hood you have, my dear

[Uberbah]

On your island country with a very unified culture and people you can do things like this.

Uniformly white skin has nothing to do with having nice things, Klansman.

Third Party Doctrine is bullshit

[Uberbah]

Because you as the user have chosen to give away that data to the carrier...

Because you have to live as a hermit or an Amish commune to enjoy privacy in modern times? You can't be a normal citizens WITHOUT third parties having information on you. Even SCOTUS, which has spent decades trying to render the 4th Amendment meaningless, now agrees that cops need a warrant to get cell phone data.

Dear Mr Kavanaugh...

[martinfb]

Dear Mr Kavanaugh:
"Websites" ALREADY pay a fee to be on the internet. They are already charged HOSTING fees.
Then, that HOST PROVIDER has already established a contract with an ISP to have access there FOR those hosted sites.

ANY other move to allow FURTHER fees to be allowed is a blatant, unethical, and greedy
push to further line the pockets of the already over-compensated execs of those monopolistic providers as-is.

Further, if we, the people, do not have our government elected officials break these monopolies down,
or severely regulate them, then we, the people, are in for some very unsavory times!

So, Mr Kavanaugh, please WAKE the FUCK UP!!! You'd better decide FOR THE PEOPLE here.

Quite the opposite

[raymorris]

Rather the opposite. His dissent said that NN laws can and should apply to Comcast, Time Warner, etc. Those companies are big enough, and have enough "market power" that the government's interest in regulating them thoroughly overrides their right to provide whatever services they want.

In contrast, Kavanaugh wrote, community mesh co-ops, etc should be allowed first amendment freedoms and the government's interest isn't as strong because these entities don't have "market power".

You CAN read his writing for yourself rather than making up shit to hate whoever Bill Maher tells you to hate.

Re:Quite the opposite

[Uberbah]

You CAN read his writing for yourself rather than making up shit to hate whoever Bill Maher tells you to hate.

And you CAN try not being willfully obtuse, as I already addressed that canard the first time: last mile and market consolidation naturally leads to less than a handful of providers in any market. The entire point is a red herring anyway; if I own a small company should I be free to ignore the Clean Water Act, dumping lead in the town's water supply, just because I don't employ 50,000 people like Dow Chemical? The entire line of "reasoning" is asinine on its face.

Re:Anti-First Amendment

[Rick Schumann]

I'm not answering any more of your silly questions, but you WILL answer this one: Why are you for big corporations controlling the content that millions of people will or will not see? I don't give a shit how you raise your kids, mister, but you WILL explain to me why it is you think corporations should have control over what people do and don't get to access on the Internet. If you won't give a straight answer to that then you can get fucked.

Re:Simple trade offs

[ComputersKai]

Incidentally, that seems to be exactly what the Chinese government does to undermine dissent. Small protests are fine, but anything that seems like more massive organization is swiftly suppressed. Maybe they remember the importance of mass organization to their own success in revolution.

Offering consumers different services isn't harmf

[raymorris]

> if I own a small company should I be free to ignore the Clean Water Act, dumping lead in the town's water supply, just because I don't employ 50,000 people like Dow Chemical? The entire line of "reasoning" is asinine on its face.

Dumping lead into the water is harmful. Offering an $8 / phone service for seniors who don't have or want a smartphone isn't harmful. Operating a community wireless mesh network isn't harmful.

The government has a strong interest in preventing lead in the water. They don't have a strong interest in preventing a community network from having rules about fair use of the limited bandwidth available. Your right to network with your neighbors is stronger than the government's legitimate interest in telling you that you can't do that.

Re:Anti-First Amendment

[dbrueck]

(sorry, Slashdot notification email went to my spam folder and I just now saw it)

you WILL answer this one: Why are you for big corporations controlling the content that millions of people will or will not see? I don't give a shit how you raise your kids, mister, but you WILL explain to me why it is you think corporations should have control over what people do and don't get to access on the Internet. If you won't give a straight answer to that then you can get fucked.

It's simple, really: I use my money to buy some computers and some radio equipment and to get the computers hooked up to the internet backbone. I give my neighbor one of the radios and he pays me $10/month to access the internet via my equipment. What have I done? Well, I've created my own ISP.

It's mine. I can do whatever I want with it. The government has no business telling me what I do with the network packets coming into my computers. If I want to drop all the packets, these are my computers, so why should the government be able to say otherwise? If I want to drop some of them - based on whatever criteria I set - it's none of the government's business. It has nothing to do with being for or against "big corporations" controlling anything.

Again, if you disagree, then justify it - make a case for how the government has a right to tell me what to do with the network packets coming into my computers that I bought and maintain with my own money. If all you can do is evade this question, resort to insults, or rant about how you don't like it, then it looks like your point is invalid.

Also, I've already listed a number of other ways in which corporations (of various sizes) control the content that people see. Why do you not have a problem with them, but you do have a problem with an owner of a private ISP controlling their own equipment?

Re:Offering consumers different services isn't har

[Uberbah]

Dumping lead into the water is harmful. Offering an $8 / phone service for seniors who don't have or want a smartphone isn't harmful. Operating a community wireless mesh network isn't harmful.

Neither of which would be at all hindered by network neutrality rules.

They don't have a strong interest in preventing a community network from having rules about fair use of the limited bandwidth available.

Network neutrality is about preventing favoritism, not quality of service. Nothing stops that tiny ISP serving hamlets in the Rockies from using QOS to prevent users from having their VOIP calls dropped.

Read them and see if you think so

[raymorris]

Read the NN law apparated by the Obama administration with those types of operations in mind and see if you still think so. Remember the whole point of the $8 plan is for seniors, kids, employees, and others who want a basic feature phone, not a smartphone, which doesn't stream Hulu or anything. Read the rules and think about how you could possibly operate such a service given the laws at the time.

Re:Read them and see if you think so

[Uberbah]

You mean do a great deal of reading to prove your talking points for you? Yeah, I'll pass on that. If you think the net neutrality rules would have prevented ISP's from using QOS to support VOIP (as opposed to prioritizing VOIP from a specific provider) feel free to make your case with citations.

Odd thing to say

[raymorris]

> You mean do a great deal of reading to prove your talking points for you?

Okay so you're saying if you did read the rule, you'd find I'm not making this shit up. Knowing what it says would prove my point, you say.

> Yeah, I'll pass on that.

You'd rather stick to what your first guess was rather than read it and know what it actually says (or listen to someone who has read it). That's cool. Of you change your mind, here's the final rule. It's very similar to the proposed time because the comment process, normally used to make refinements to a rule, to adjust things where needed, got hijacked:

https://www.federalregister.go...

Reading it, it's helpful to have some knowledge of routing on carrier networks, and particularly traffic shaping and policing. A familiarity with queueing theory comes in handy, but isn't required.

Re:Odd thing to say

[Uberbah]

Okay so you're saying if you did read the rule, you'd find I'm not making this shit up. Knowing what it says would prove my point, you say.

Not how this works. It's the job of the person making the affirmative claim to back it up as it's near impossible to prove a negative. If you're so confident in your talking point, you'll have no problem citing the part of the 2015 rules that would prevent QOS. Throwing up a link to a wall of text isn't a citation, it's laziness.

Changed your guess?

[raymorris]

You said you wouldn't "You mean do a great deal of reading to prove your talking points for you". Sounded to me like you were saying if you read it, that would prove my points correct.

Now it sounds like you're saying you're not so sure, that perhaps if you read the rule, it might not. Interesting guess.

Any time you want to know what it actually says, when you're done guessing, you now have the rule and can read it if you wish. If I were you, I wouldn't bother, since that rule is dead and gone. If I were you, I'd read the new NN bill that will be introduced. The proposed new law is, to me, more interesting than the law that is gone. So you could read the new proposal when it comes along. Or you could make random guesses about what it might say next time.

So you can't actually back up your claims.

[Uberbah]

I'm shocked, shocked that's the case. Again: throwing up a link to a wall of text isn't a citation, it's laziness, which is easily demonstrated. I hereby assert that a cheeky page inserted a line into the 2017 federal omnibus bill stating Ray Morris is incredibly lazy and likes to make up nonsense, a bad combination. If you disagree, feel free to read said bill to prove me wrong.