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FCC ignored your net neutrality comment unless you made ‘serious’ legal argument

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Re: FCC ignored your net neutrality comment unless you made ‘serious’ legal argument

#11

Post by Overtonwindow »

craftyguy wrote: post #8
Overtonwindow wrote: post #4

I used to work at a federal agency processing these comments. This practice is not new or unique to FCC. There is a segment of the population who respond to just about ever request for comment the federal government puts out. I think more should be done to cut down on bots. The legal argument thing seems a bit pompous. I've never heard that before and I've reviewed, and filed, a lot of comments. Unfortunately the FCC…

How does one file a legal comment?

You file a comment but argue your point from a legal perspective. Rather than putting forth an opinion, show the FCC why their proposed rule making is against the law; their interpretation of the law is incorrect. Look at EFF's comment, or Googles.

Re: FCC ignored your net neutrality comment unless you made ‘serious’ legal argument

#12

Post by rubicon33 »

indubitable wrote: post #2

According to the article, the FCC received 22 million comments. If they spent a modest 2 minutes per comment - that would be 83 man years of time to process the comments. They obviously need to filter it down. For a system with no meaningful requirements to comment or even proof of uniqueness, quantity says absolutely nothing and fraud is a given. Even if we were able to prove uniqueness -- how should informal intern…

I would expect a government capable of launching nuclear warheads to any location on the planet and sending a man to the moon to also be capable of filtering out spam in a comment system. This is a 'solved' AI/NLP problem and lack of doing so is almost surely intentional as it allows them to muddy the waters even more.

Re: FCC ignored your net neutrality comment unless you made ‘serious’ legal argument

#14

Post by shmerl »

Current FCC plans run afoul of anti-trust law since they would allow monopolistic ISPs who own the physical network and services like video, to harm competitors (which provide over the top services that have to go through the above physical network) by using data caps, interconnection blocking and other anti-competitive approaches. How is that not a serious legal argument?

Re: FCC ignored your net neutrality comment unless you made ‘serious’ legal argument

#16

Post by notacoward »

shmerl wrote: post #14

Current FCC plans run afoul of anti-trust law since they would allow monopolistic ISPs who own the physical network and services like video, to harm competitors (which provide over the top services that have to go through the above physical network) by using data caps, interconnection blocking and other anti-competitive approaches. How is that not a serious legal argument?

One answer might be that it's a serious legal argument not under the FCC's purview. FCC has an interest in keeping communications media from discriminating, but anti-competitive behavior and many other aspects of what we think of as net neutrality fall under FTC instead. It was always a bit of a stretch for FCC to be taking the lead on this.

It might even be better to let FTC lead on this, because they have authority FCC does not to regulate parties other than the connectivity providers. For example, they can forbid Google from using their market position in other areas to gain a competitive advantage with their own connectivity services. They can keep a close eye on Netflix's attempts to compete with or blackmail providers over CDNs. That might be real network neutrality, not the one-sided vision heavily promoted by content providers.

Re: FCC ignored your net neutrality comment unless you made ‘serious’ legal argument

#17

Post by sova »

To me it is a utility argument: A wealthier household would receive "premium filtered water" through the plumbing while other homes that are paying the standard rate would be given filthy and untreated water through their plumbing. Does the water utility violate a law practicing this way? Because if it does, the same is true of Abolishing Net Neutrality.

Re: FCC ignored your net neutrality comment unless you made ‘serious’ legal argument

#18

Post by twblalock »

xenadu02 wrote: post #6
indubitable wrote: post #2

According to the article, the FCC received 22 million comments. If they spent a modest 2 minutes per comment - that would be 83 man years of time to process the comments. They obviously need to filter it down. For a system with no meaningful requirements to comment or even proof of uniqueness, quantity says absolutely nothing and fraud is a given. Even if we were able to prove uniqueness -- how should informal intern…

The simplest explanation is that Pai coordinates with the ISPs to stuff the comment boxes with spam so they would have a justification for ignoring them; courts have occasionally struck down rules because agencies didn’t properly consider public input. That’s because the conclusion was foregone: Pai will do what his benefactors want then sail to a cushy consulting job as a reward for his work.

No, the simplest explanation is that the FCC just received a bunch of comments. I have no problem believing that -- I've seen quite a few Facebook and Reddit posts encouraging people to comment.

Once you start arguing that a conspiracy exists between the FCC and ISPs to game an online comment system, you're far beyond a simple explanation.

Re: FCC ignored your net neutrality comment unless you made ‘serious’ legal argument

#19

Post by blahblab »

helthanatos wrote: post #15
helthanatos wrote: post #13

Here is my legal argument: I pay for bandwidth. The ISP has no right to what goes through.

It's an exchange of goods. Doing anything to impede speeds of specific websites is illegal.

Anything that congress says is legal is legal. When you vote, you vote for the people who make things legal. You voted to make this legal.

Re: FCC ignored your net neutrality comment unless you made ‘serious’ legal argument

#20

Post by failrate »

twblalock wrote: post #18
xenadu02 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The simplest explanation is that Pai coordinates with the ISPs to stuff the comment boxes with spam so they would have a justification for ignoring them; courts have occasionally struck down rules because agencies didn’t properly consider public input. That’s because the conclusion was foregone: Pai will do what his benefactors want then sail to a cushy consulting job as a reward for his work.

No, the simplest explanation is that the FCC just received a bunch of comments. I have no problem believing that -- I've seen quite a few Facebook and Reddit posts encouraging people to comment. Once you start arguing that a conspiracy exists between the FCC and ISPs to game an online comment system, you're far beyond a simple explanation.

The problem with your theory is that the comment system was gamed. Numerous spam comments that are anti-Net Neutrality were made from people who either support Neutrality or are dead.
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