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

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

#151

Post by paulddraper »

peterwwillis wrote: post #139
smsm42 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's called checks and balances, and it was how the system was designed to work. No, it's not. Just repeating "checks and balances" doesn't mean courts can be abused for doing something that is not court's purpose. The court's purpose is preserving the consistency of legislation (including the Constitution as supreme, very hard to change part of the law) and adherence of executive to the law. In this case, the exec…

> They are being used to force through a policy that is not supported by either legislature or executive. That's not a function of a proper court. They're asking the court to reverse the repealing of legislation, with the argument that the FCC should not have been allowed to repeal it because their legal reasoning was flawed. Who is pushing policy? Was Obama pushing policy by instituting regulation? Was the FCC pushi…

> the FCC should not have been allowed to repeal it because their legal reasoning was flawed

I have not been able to pin this down.

What law/rule did the FCC allegedly violate?

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

#152

Post by phkahler »

peterwwillis wrote: post #61
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.…

I came here to say the opposite. The states are doing what they can to limit damaging actions by the federal government. This is the system working for the people. Without the ability or interest from the states to push back against the federal government's decrees, we would be stuck with an authoritarian nation. Currently, trying to pass meaningful legislation is like trying to squeeze a watermelon through a pinhole…

>> The states are doing what they can to limit damaging actions by the federal government.

I wonder how many of those states made laws forbidding or working against municipal broadband.

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

#153

Post by smsm42 »

s73v3r_ wrote: post #122
smsm42 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If it passes the house and the senate If. It is likely to pass the House? > of course trump will sign it If Trump supports it, why doesn't he instruct Ajit Pai to implement this policy, or if he doesn't want to do it, why doesn't he replace Ajit Pai with somebody whose views on the subject align with those of Trump? I think it might be because Trump doesn't actually support it.

Trump doesn't actually care about it, and I would be surprised if he understood it. Right now he's against it because Obama did it.

I think you confuse the caricature of Trump that is pleasing to you to behold because you disagree with him with the actual Trump. While it is pleasing to think people you disagree with are blithering idiots, in case one of them is a President of the US the ignorance of the real state of affairs is not on your side and is not going to serve you well. It is always wrong to underestimate your opponent, it's particularly dangerous if the opponent has a lot of power.

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

#154

Post by sigstoat »

phkahler wrote: post #152
peterwwillis wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I came here to say the opposite. The states are doing what they can to limit damaging actions by the federal government. This is the system working for the people. Without the ability or interest from the states to push back against the federal government's decrees, we would be stuck with an authoritarian nation. Currently, trying to pass meaningful legislation is like trying to squeeze a watermelon through a pinhole…

>> The states are doing what they can to limit damaging actions by the federal government. I wonder how many of those states made laws forbidding or working against municipal broadband.

and how many of them have made any effort to clean up the permitting processes for rolling out fiber.

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

#155

Post by wang_li »

monocasa wrote: post #130
wang_li wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why? Going back to the common carrier regulations pre-Internet, it's like you're saying that just because mail carriers have to carry anything (as long as it's safe), then magazines delivered by mail carriers would have to allow anyone to write articles. I'm not saying that at all. I'm saying that an entity that wants common carrier protections has to act like a common carrier. If they want to be a publisher with f…

Facebook/YoutTube/Google don't want to be common carriers though. They're DMCA safe harbors, but that's totally different. Do you think newspapers shouldn't be allowed to have opinion articles that are prefaced with "not the opinion of the paper"?

> Facebook/YoutTube/Google don't want to be common carriers though. They're DMCA safe harbors, but that's totally different.

I didn't say they should be. I was correcting your analogy, then I reiterated the idea that you can be a publisher with control over what you publish and liability for what you publish, or you can be free from liability and not have editorial control. It's an easy concept and it fits perfectly as a principle to strive for with regards to net neutrality.

> Do you think newspapers shouldn't be allowed to have opinion articles that are prefaced with "not the opinion of the paper"?

What relevance is your question to the topic at hand? It's not like newspapers are absolved from liability for what they publish, even OpEd's and opinion columns. Imagine a newspaper publishing a six hundred page sunday edition, chock full of advertisements, and the full contents of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone under the byline potterfan69 and a header on the page saying "Opinion."

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

#156

Post by _bxg1 »

scottydelta wrote: post #131
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.

To show the improvements in speeds, all that ISPs has to do is provide full/unthrottled speed for speed test websites such as fast.com and speedtest.net.

...which they're now allowed to do, without net neutrality.

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

#157

Post by _bxg1 »

dmritard96 wrote: post #120

For anyone in a place with options, My suggestion is simply switching to a Net Neutrality proponent. Ditching my comcast today in favor of Sonic fiber. Cheaper, supports net neutrality, and waaayyy faster :)

A big part of the point is that almost nobody has any options. If there were room for real competition in the space, regulation might not be necessary. Part of the barrier of entry is inherent: building infrastructure is hard. But part of it has been artificially constructed by the existing players through lobbying: https://www.wired.com/2016/09/utility-poles-important-future...

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

#158

Post by openasocket »

paulddraper wrote: post #151
peterwwillis wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They are being used to force through a policy that is not supported by either legislature or executive. That's not a function of a proper court. They're asking the court to reverse the repealing of legislation, with the argument that the FCC should not have been allowed to repeal it because their legal reasoning was flawed. Who is pushing policy? Was Obama pushing policy by instituting regulation? Was the FCC pushi…

> the FCC should not have been allowed to repeal it because their legal reasoning was flawed I have not been able to pin this down. What law/rule did the FCC allegedly violate?

Check out the NY filing for more complete information about their arguments (https://ag.ny.gov/sites/default/files/nn_govt_petitioners_br...). But the short answer is that the FCC is being accused of violating the Administrative Procedures Act.

The APA was created in response to the growth of government agencies tasked with creating regulations, essentially to curb the power of bureaucrats. Agencies are required to keep the public informed about possible changes to regulations and to allow for public participation, but what's relevant to this case is the process by which proposed changes are approved. In order to change the existing regulations, there has to be a formal review process, which involves gathering evidence and making a decision based on that evidence. Essentially, agencies like the FCC can't just change their rules on a whim, they have to look at all available evidence and actually come up with an argument for why the change needs to happen based on that evidence. Agency heads still get a decent amount of leeway, but standard is that their decisions cannot be "arbitrary and capricious." That's a legal term with a whole body of precedent behind it, google for more info.

I should also point out that suing based on the APA has come up a lot in this administration. My girlfriend is involved with environmental lobbying groups, and a number of the EPA rule changes proposed under the Trump administration have been thrown out because they did not properly follow the APA. The DOJ's repeal of DACA is also currently being challenged as violating the APA.

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

#159

Post by smsm42 »

openasocket wrote: post #145
smsm42 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's called checks and balances, and it was how the system was designed to work. No, it's not. Just repeating "checks and balances" doesn't mean courts can be abused for doing something that is not court's purpose. The court's purpose is preserving the consistency of legislation (including the Constitution as supreme, very hard to change part of the law) and adherence of executive to the law. In this case, the exec…

This is very much a case of checks and balances. This article is a little misleading because it only quotes those filing suit saying that they don't like the FCC's actions. The actual suit filed ( https://ag.ny.gov/sites/default/files/nn_govt_petitioners_br... ) has actual legal arguments. First, they argue the process by which the rule was passed was in violation of the Administrative Procedures Act. Second, they ar…

You seem to think "checks and balances" means "we have so many ways to get what I want through and it's ok to use any of them in any ways as long as at the end what I want is getting done". It's not the case. "Checks and balances" does not mean "if legislature doesn't get us the result I want, we should try courts next". It means each branch of the government has its role, and for the courts it's upholding the existing law, not creating policy. It is clear that the current dispute is a policy/political one - should we follow one policy or another. The courts is exactly the wrong place to decide such things, no matter how many times you say "checks and balances".

> they argue the process by which the rule was passed was in violation of the Administrative Procedures Act

Which may or may not be true (most likely not, since it would be stupid to undermine important policy decision by not signing a proper form, but of course one should never overestimate the federal government workers and their capacity of keeping things orderly). But if it's true, then they can just re-pass the same decision, now signing all the proper forms in the proper places and the end effect would be colossal waste of time and money and the same outcome at the end of it. Since FCC is the one to decide the policy, and head of the FCC has decided to not have NN, arguing essentially "but you didn't fill the TPC report in triplicate!" is not an argument against the policy that can be effective. It's also not a proper way to enact a policy.

> they argue that the rule exceeds the FCC's authority

That sounds ridiculous. Instituting NN does not exceed FCC authority, but reverting to pre-2015 does? I am not a lawyer, but for a common person that makes zero sense.

> by preventing states from enacting their own net neutrality regulation.

Hasn't then 2015 ruling been equally invalid for preventing states from enacting their own policies which do not include net neutrality regulations? If we argue it should be in the state level (which I'm always fine with) then 2015 rule should be rescinded and they should sue for restricting the current rule only to federal policy but allow states to enact their own policies. But don't they sue for reinstating 2015 policy instead?

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

#160

Post by smsm42 »

cabaalis wrote: post #141
smsm42 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's called checks and balances, and it was how the system was designed to work. No, it's not. Just repeating "checks and balances" doesn't mean courts can be abused for doing something that is not court's purpose. The court's purpose is preserving the consistency of legislation (including the Constitution as supreme, very hard to change part of the law) and adherence of executive to the law. In this case, the exec…

What's broken is that there are "sides" at all. The American people are being restricted from free thinking on individual issues because of party-based politics. This is intentional, to create "wedge" issues out of thin air so we stay divided and whoever wants power has a shot at taking it.

Well, if the decision is "should we have state-enforced net neutrality regulations" then there would be "yes" and "no" sides I assume. Given binary-partisan US politics, there would be natural alignment of parties along such sides, but the yes/no question would remain even if we didn't have any parties at all.
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