Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Twenty-two states ask appeals court to bring back net neutrality

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 250 posts

Re: Twenty-two states ask appeals court to bring back net neutrality

#31

Post by lotsofpulp »

javagram wrote: post #8
EpiphanyMachine wrote: post #2

The system seems broken when states representing more than 50% of the population have to sue in court to try to change something like this. Instead with that much backing it should be done through the legislative branch. I'm concerned about the growing use of courts to try to decide policies because our legislative bodies can't work together and instead just try to force one sided issues through or block each other.…

The House of Representatives majority, which is held by the GOP and is anti - net neutrality, also represents more than 50% of the US population by this method of counting (which says the state AGs “represent” people who didn’t vote for them). Under the constitutional system of the US something like net neutrality could be passed as a law by the congress, but there hasn’t been a congress that chose to do so.

It represents a gerrymandered "50%" of the population.

Re: Twenty-two states ask appeals court to bring back net neutrality

#32

Post by EpiphanyMachine »

IronWolve wrote: post #26

>US Internet Speed Has Gone From 12th To 6th Fastest Since End Of Net Neutrality I see this being tossed around as a counter to the main point of NN being slow down of speed. Also, why do the state dem AG's always suing to enforce new laws instead of the legislation process, it seems like the new way to pass laws is to get a judge to give it to you. We have legal weed from legislation now.

> Also, why do the state dem AG's always suing to enforce new laws instead of the legislation process, it seems like the new way to pass laws is to get a judge to give it to you. We have legal weed from legislation now.

I agree with your position, but it's not just Dems. This is the main point of my comment also, this should be done with legislation.

Re: Twenty-two states ask appeals court to bring back net neutrality

#33

Post by rapnie »

EpiphanyMachine wrote: post #13
javagram wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The House of Representatives majority, which is held by the GOP and is anti - net neutrality, also represents more than 50% of the US population by this method of counting (which says the state AGs “represent” people who didn’t vote for them). Under the constitutional system of the US something like net neutrality could be passed as a law by the congress, but there hasn’t been a congress that chose to do so.

Yes, and it's interesting some of those states have an AG sueing for a policy the House Representatives won't support.

Also interesting is who the Representatives represent when supporting the abolishment of NN.

Re: Twenty-two states ask appeals court to bring back net neutrality

#34

Post by barneygumble742 »

javagram wrote: post #8
EpiphanyMachine wrote: post #2

The system seems broken when states representing more than 50% of the population have to sue in court to try to change something like this. Instead with that much backing it should be done through the legislative branch. I'm concerned about the growing use of courts to try to decide policies because our legislative bodies can't work together and instead just try to force one sided issues through or block each other.…

The House of Representatives majority, which is held by the GOP and is anti - net neutrality, also represents more than 50% of the US population by this method of counting (which says the state AGs “represent” people who didn’t vote for them). Under the constitutional system of the US something like net neutrality could be passed as a law by the congress, but there hasn’t been a congress that chose to do so.

The Senate actually came up with a resolution to reinstate NN but Paul Ryan refuses to bring it up for a vote in the House. So there is your legislative bottleneck. If it passes the house and the senate, of course trump will sign it and take credit for it. Not a difficult task there.

Re: Twenty-two states ask appeals court to bring back net neutrality

#35

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

AsyncAwait wrote: post #9
mberning wrote: post #4

One thing I don’t understand is why states do not enact their own net neutrality legislation. As far as I know every state has a public utilities commission of some sort that regulates power, water, etc. Why could this not work for ISPs?

> One thing I don’t understand is why states do not enact their own net neutrality legislation. I'm not from the States, but my guess is that they want it to be enforceable at the federal level. At state level, the ISP could theoretically lodge a compliant at a federal court and as per the supremacy clause of the U.S. Constitution, the federal law, (no net neutrality), is extremely likely to win over state law.

Cable companies are the bulk of the ISPs in the US and they are subject to local municipal regulation in return for right-of-way access. In more conservative parts of the country this power is/was used to ban channels deemed unfit for community standards, like MTV. These same communities could impose net neutrality on the cable ISPs if they wanted.

Re: Twenty-two states ask appeals court to bring back net neutrality

#36

Post by landryraccoon »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #22

Be careful what you wish for. A significant portion of the general population see Twitter, Google, and Facebook as infrastructure companies. If a large enough portion of the population is convinced that net neutrality is important and legislation must be written to accomplish it, the three companies and likely CloudFlare will likely fall under its umbrella. If you ask people to recall an incident of Internet censorsh…

How would this not be a good thing? Facebook and Google probably should face more public scrutiny, not less.

Re: Twenty-two states ask appeals court to bring back net neutrality

#37

Post by chimeracoder »

EpiphanyMachine wrote: post #5
mberning wrote: post #4

One thing I don’t understand is why states do not enact their own net neutrality legislation. As far as I know every state has a public utilities commission of some sort that regulates power, water, etc. Why could this not work for ISPs?

I think the FCC is trying to remove that ability from States now because federal law overrules state law. > The Attorneys General are hardly alone on this one. As Reuters notes, Mozilla, Vimeo and Etsy also joined forces today to file a legal challenge, while governors in six states have signed executive orders and three states have passed their own net neutrality laws.

> I think the FCC is trying to remove that ability from States now because federal law overrules state law.

Sort of. The relationship between federal and state law is complex, and it's actually disputed whether the attempts to prevent states from enacting their own net neutrality laws are themselves constitutional.

Re: Twenty-two states ask appeals court to bring back net neutrality

#38

Post by ocdtrekkie »

cirgue wrote: post #25
corerius wrote: post #11

I'm still trying to grok why ISPs are supposed to treat all customers equally while PayPal, eBay, youtube, GoDaddy, Twitter, etc. are allowed to pick and choose. I'd be more comfortable with the arguments if people were consistent in them.

Those services all have vibrant competition, your ISP definitely doesn't. The whole point of common carrier regulation is to make sure that industries that are essential to the economy, inherently non-competitive, and impossible to implement effectively as a government service can exist and serve their purpose in society. Youtube/google/fb doesn't fit that definition. There is absolutely competition in that space, an…

Google has almost no competition in several different market categories, and not just regionally, but on a global scale. I have three ISPs which offer about comparable service offerings, and four major wireless carriers. And no wired ISP even can say it has national coverage.

Tech monopolies are bigger, they have more money, and they've spent more of that money convincing you ISPs are the big bad.

I'm not opposed to regulation, but regulation needs to apply to tech companies as well as ISPs equally. And you'll discover that support for regulation vanishes as soon as that comes into play.

People have forgotten that tech companies now also do infrastructure and ISPs now also do services. So when tech companies are trying to get ISPs regulated, they're trying to lock down their competition. (Unsurprisingly, Google Fiber was known for trying to dodge being classifed as a telecommunications company specifically so it wasn't subject to the same regulations it's competitors weer.)

Re: Twenty-two states ask appeals court to bring back net neutrality

#39

Post by lostcolony »

IronWolve wrote: post #26

>US Internet Speed Has Gone From 12th To 6th Fastest Since End Of Net Neutrality I see this being tossed around as a counter to the main point of NN being slow down of speed. Also, why do the state dem AG's always suing to enforce new laws instead of the legislation process, it seems like the new way to pass laws is to get a judge to give it to you. We have legal weed from legislation now.

Looking at Q1 2017, and comparing against Q3 2015, we saw the average speed of the US, as measured by Akamai (i.e., someone actually delivering content, not just a 'speed test', which we know is gamed, and largely only hit by people with quick speeds anyway; I've never checked my speed except when I got a new ISP that said it was faster than my old one, i.e., when I first got 100mbps, and when I first got fiber) increase from 12.6mbps to 18.8 mbps. A year and a half under net neutrality and actual, real world average speeds increased 50%. So that was the pre-existing trajectory. It's not like "we're going to repeal net neutrality" is going to cause ISPs to pull their investments instantly, not when they've already been investing. If it's even related.

Re: Twenty-two states ask appeals court to bring back net neutrality

#40

Post by justinzollars »

I would like to see Twitter, Google, CloudFlare and Facebook classified as public utilities. While Alex Jones is a nut case (And shouldn't be defended), other less publicized incidents of censorship by Social Media companies has occurred (related to picking winners between Israel and Palestine) [1]. While I am a Democrat who has been elected in the past, I agree with the conservative argument that: Corporate censorship dampens the spirit of free speech.

[1] Facebook Says It Is Deleting Accounts at the Direction of the U.S. and Israeli Governments https://theintercept.com/2017/12/30/facebook-says-it-is-dele...

Post reply on HN