Slashdot Mirror


22 States Ask US Appeals Court To Reinstate Net Neutrality Rules (reuters.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: A group of 22 state attorneys general and the District of Columbia late Monday asked a U.S. appeals court to reinstate the Obama administration's 2015 landmark net neutrality rules and reject the Trump administration's efforts to preempt states from imposing their own rules guaranteeing an open internet. The states argue the FCC reversal will harm consumers. The states also suggested the FCC failed to identify any "valid authority" for preempting state and local laws that would protect net neutrality. The FCC failed to offer a "meaningful defense of its decision to uncritically accept industry promises that are untethered to any enforcement mechanism," the states said.

The state attorney generals suing represent states with 165 million people -- more than half the United States population -- and include California, Illinois, New Jersey, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Virginia. The states argue the FCC action could harm public safety, citing electrical grids as an example. They argue "the absence of open internet rules jeopardizes the ability to reduce load in times of extreme energy grid stress. Consequently, the order threatens the reliability of the electric grid."
Several internet companies also filed a legal challenge to overturn the FCC ruling, including Mozilla, Vimeo, Etsy, and numerous media and technology advocacy groups, reports Reuters. The group of 22 state attorneys general first filed their lawsuit in January after the Trump administration voted to repeal the net neutrality rules in December.

3 of 125 comments (clear)

  1. Re:It's been months by jellomizer · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Hard to tell, ISP are for the most part unregulated, so how do we know if we are being throttled, or just their site is slower then others?
    Being that ISP would want to keep this quite, they probably will make sure not to throttle internet speed tests, heck they may put them on the fast lane.
    See we sold you 100mbs connection and run these speed tests and you are getting 105mbs.

    The reason for Net Neutrality, is because ISP today are rarely just an ISP, but a media conglomerate. So we are using their infrastructure to access competitors, and new technology and sites which may require more bandwidth or different types of connections that the ISP may just not want to do. Because it is expensive.

    --
    If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
  2. Re:It's been months by burtosis · · Score: 4, Insightful

    We already have seen what happens without net neutrality, Verizon, Comcast, and others have already throttled Netflix - the only difference is they were caught at a time when it wasn't legal. Now that it is legal, this kind of activity aimed at locking the consumer in and stripping their choices so they can increase profits and stop new competition is just going to expand. My reason for the very gradual changes are two fold. First, if every ISP started massively screwing customers day 1, there would be a massive blowback possibly undoing the whole thing. Far "better" to boil the frog slowly to avoid the backlash. Second, this only just went into effect and cases like this one, or if the senate flips blue, could undo it all. So ISP are approaching this cautiously. I can't think of a single time removing customer protections in the name of "companies are free to shaft steal and grift or treat customers right, so highly informed customers with tons of options will weed them out" ever worked for anyone but the shareholders of the few remaining borderline criminal enterprises.

  3. Re:It's been months by Duhavid · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I call BS.

    *How* could internet speeds have gone from 12th to 6th since NN was repealed?
    What does it mean to have gone from 12th to 6th? Compared to what? What were the actual average speed changes?
    Or was it just "creative mathematics"?

    Are you saying that equipment was rolled out that upped speeds? Where, when?
    Anecdotal, but my speeds have not changed appreciably.

    And how is that tied to NN repeal?
    NN's repeal could be argued as april to june of this year. Given the most favorable amount of time, carriers purchased and deployed sufficient equipment in 4 months to have made a difference ( and again, what is the difference? )?

    --
    emt 377 emt 4