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FCC Tells Court It Has No 'Legal Authority' To Impose Net Neutrality Rules (arstechnica.com)
The Federal Communications Commission opened its defense of its net neutrality repeal yesterday, telling a court that it has no authority to keep the net neutrality rules in place. From a report: Chairman Ajit Pai's FCC argued that broadband is not a "telecommunications service" as defined in federal law, and therefore it must be classified as an information service instead. As an information service, broadband cannot be subject to common carrier regulations such as net neutrality rules, Pai's FCC said. The FCC is only allowed to impose common carrier regulations on telecommunications services. "Given these classification decisions, the Commission determined that the Communications Act does not endow it with legal authority to retain the former conduct rules," the FCC said in a summary of its defense filed yesterday in the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The FCC is defending the net neutrality repeal against a lawsuit filed by more than 20 state attorneys general, consumer advocacy groups, and tech companies. The FCC's opponents in the case will file reply briefs next month, and oral arguments are scheduled for February.
If the FCC has no authority to impose net neutrality regulations on telecommunication services, then it equally has no authority to prevent states from imposing their own net neutrality regulations, because their is no federal authority that they are usurping. This means that the fundamental premise behind the suit filed by the telecom companies to invalidate California's net neutrality legislation has no footing, since it requires the FCC to have the authority Mr. Pai just disclaimed it possessing.
Ok fine, so the FCC says it has no legal standing to enforce net neutrality, then it ought to step aside and let the states do it.
https://www.theverge.com/2018/...
The big difference between a "carrier" and "information service" is that an information service produces the information is gives to customers, even if it's produced from information other sources provide.
In other words, an "information service" is not only permitted to, but is expected to be adding to or changing the information passing through it. A related example would be a local network television station inserting its own ads in network programming. For an ISP, it means they would have full legal justification to run proxies that MITM encrypted streams and inject their own ads, or extract the data you send and resell it to advertisers. Essentially, any security effected by HTTPS is compromised, and because the CA trust model is inherently broken, that insecurity can even be made undetectable.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Good, gtfo. We don't want your shit-ass ISP in our state.
The problem is that they aren't just private corporations.
They're private corporations with natural and artificial monopolies on several aspects of the market, which means there is a necessity for regulation to ensure they don't abuse those monopolies to the detriment of society.
Completely neutralize the monopolies, and net neutrality isn't a problem.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
The citizens of California would be your customers. And we've decided how we want you to run your ISP. We've decided on some regulations that we've made in to law. If you can't run a business that follows these regulations, then we don't want you here.
"tele" - to or at a distance
"Communication" (from Latin commūnicāre, meaning "to share") is the act of conveying meanings from one entity or group to another through the use of mutually understood signs and semiotic rules.
Sounds an awful lot like a good definition of what the information communication infrastructure of the Internet does.
Internet information-communication service providers are CLEARLY telecommunications service providers under any non-crack-smoking interpretation of the common sense meaning of English language terms.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
I don't have exact case names, but I specifically remember that the Obama-era FCC went to court because the telcos sued them claiming the FCC did not have the authority to regulate net neutrality under Title 1 (information services). The telcos won, and the courts told the FCC that if they wanted to mandate net neutrality, they'd have to do it under Title 2 (by regulating ISPs the same as telephone companies).
That was EXACTLY what Tom Wheeler did - he moved ISPs under title 2 and began regulating them as Title 2 Common Carriers, which DID give the FCC the authority to mandate net neutrality because that's what the courts told him he had to do.
I would hope the court would respect stare decisis and tell Ajit Pai that he cannot have it both ways, preferably forcing him to restore the regulation of ISPs under Title 2.