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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/...
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.
"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?
"[B]roadband providers do not make a stand-alone offering of telecommunications," the FCC also said. "[B]roadband providers generally market and provide information processing capabilities and transmission together as a single service, and consumers perceive that service to include more than mere transmission."
This to me is further reinforcement that Pai only really cares about the corporations involved. Everyone I know from tech saavy-to-noob, young-to-old, just wants straight up Internet access. None of the extra junk services that Comcast, TimeWarner, etc want to sell you. Pai is just such a straight up Corp shill I can't believe people from all political stripes aren't insisting that he be fired.