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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

#181

Post by tzs »

smsm42 wrote: post #153
s73v3r_ wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 particularl…

You raise some decent points in general, but it is hard to apply them to Trump in the case of net neutrality because he has actually spoken out on it [1]:

> Obama’s attack on the internet is another top down power grab. Net neutrality is the Fairness Doctrine. Will target conservative media

[1] https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/53260835850816716...

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

#182

Post by corerius »

seorphates wrote: post #28
titusjohnson wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know you're just trolling, but one this is clearly apples and oranges.

But the trolling is a serious problem and more effort needs to go into addressing it directly. This is the stuff that righteous idiots grab a hold of - it's basically an iron buoy thrown to people that can't swim. To top poster: these two things are not the same. They are wholly different classes where at the very base level one cannot exist without the other, literally. One is a utility provisioning and the other an…

lol. I guess that I'm a righteous idiot then (ie. someone who might not agree with you).

Mostly, the point is that people choose their battles based on bias or their own needs, not some sort of overall logic.

I can understand the argument over the various sorts of non-neutrality. A need to bring together cable tv and internet pricing and bandwidth needs, the opportunity to break out fixed and variable pricing on bytes moved, etc. The main point is that it simply isn't as simple as waving a sign around and getting out the vote.

Heck, we might as well all get worked up about the fact that the USPS allows you to buy 1 day shipping or that the shipping companies cut special deals with large customers. Another example is toll roads.

The world is a complicated place and doesn't succumb well to slogans.

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

#183

Post by tzs »

barneygumble742 wrote: post #34
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.

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.

> If it passes the house and the senate, of course trump will sign it and take credit for it

That's pretty much inconceivable. He made repealing it part of his campaign, and specifically claimed that it was an Obama power grab designed to target conservative media.

Even if he has decided since then that net neutrality is acceptable, or even actually desirable and wants it to happen, he would not do it by merely reinstating the 2015 rules for that would be a tacit admission that he was wrong during the campaign.

He would do it by having new rules written, so that he could say that he fixed the Obama rules.

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

#184

Post by corerius »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #63
fedorareis wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are lucky to have 3 comparable ISPs. In the area where I live each town has at most 2 ISPs. One of them provides DSL and the other cable. This means if you want speeds above about 5Mbps you have 1 choice. We were forced to switch to cable because our DSL provider couldn’t even manage to maintain a consistent connection much less the 5Mbps we were paying for. All this to say there are plenty of places where there…

You are missing most of the point: ISP competition and tech competition are not dissimilar, and their placement in the product market is not dissimilar. They should be subject to the same regulations. But the tech companies pushing these regulations are strongly opposed to being subject to these same regulations. Most people cannot easily leave tech companies easily, even if they believe they can. You actually can't…

Heck, life generally is filled with that kind of inertia.

It's not easy to change banks or brokerage houses. Does it make sense that someone with $1M at Vanguard gets a bunch of special perks and lower fees? Not fair!!!

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

#185

Post by cududa »

uses wrote: post #178

Where did this new anti-NN talking point come from about how, if we're going to have net neutrality then we also need to allow people to be terrible on social media without taking responsibility for it? I swear I've seen this so many times in the past few months, including multiple comments in this thread. If moderation of corporate software platforms is an important issue for you, great, but surely you can see the d…

It’s being heavily pushed by conservative talking heads. Basically just limping everything into “net neutrality” because everyone knows the phrase

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

#186

Post by wvenable »

deadmik3 wrote: post #180
komali2 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You aren't allowed to bury cat5 in your neighborhood without government approval, and they'd tell you to just lease time off Comcast lines. What will you connect your cat5 cable to?

Plug your router into your neighbor's, and everyone else that wants to join your new ISP. I don't see the difficulty; it's just as easy as starting a new eBay site and getting people to sign up

You can create an ISP and then you have to work to get people to sign up.

You can create a eBay site and then you have to work to get people to sign up.

And your argument is the hard part of making an eBay site is signing people up and hand-wave over the build part of both these things? Apples to Spaceships comparison.

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

#187

Post by wvenable »

fein wrote: post #166
moorhosj wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the bottom of your Wikipedia article there is a more relevant case: "While the Marsh holding at first appears somewhat narrow and inapplicable to the present day due to the disappearance of company towns from the United States, it was raised in the somewhat high-profile 1996 cyberlaw case, Cyber Promotions v. America Online, 948 F. Supp. 436, 442 (E.D. Pa. 1996). Cyber Promotions wished to send out "mass email adv…

> A more relevant case So are we deliberately conflating spam with political discourse now? Seriously?

Only political discourse is free speech?

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

#188

Post by deadmik3 »

wvenable wrote: post #186
deadmik3 wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plug your router into your neighbor's, and everyone else that wants to join your new ISP. I don't see the difficulty; it's just as easy as starting a new eBay site and getting people to sign up

You can create an ISP and then you have to work to get people to sign up. You can create a eBay site and then you have to work to get people to sign up. And your argument is the hard part of making an eBay site is signing people up and hand-wave over the build part of both these things? Apples to Spaceships comparison.

Well, the argument is that if you don't like eBay it's easy to just go make your own. I'm not disagreeing with that. I'm just assuming that part of "making your own" is getting the other users to sign up, since an auction site with no one to bid isn't very useful. So it's the same with ISPs: if you don't like it just make your own.

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

#189

Post by pseudalopex »

smsm42 wrote: post #124
twblalock wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The system working for the people would be the states to make their own legislation. Using courts to force federal government to take action that elected executive and elected legislature do not support is not system working. The tension between federal and state power is an intentionally designed feature of the system, and the fact that the states can push back is one of the several ways the system is supposed to…

> The tension between federal and state power is an intentionally designed feature of the system True, but "AGs of states finding friendly judge to force federal legislature to do their bidding" is not part of that design. If they just passed state-wide regulations and federal AG would sue them for it, then it'd be a different case, where one could justifiably invoke state rights. But in this case it's just plain law…

The states brought suit in the court specified by federal law. They don't get to pick the judges. They're suing the FCC, not Congress.

The courts will either uphold the order or overturn it on procedural grounds. If they uphold the order, Congress doesn't have to do anything. If they overturn it, the FCC can try again, Congress can amend the procedures the FCC is required to follow, and/or Congress can enact the same rules the FCC improperly ordered.

The other part of the case is whether states can enforce their own regulations, which several have already passed. It's better for everyone to resolve that question promptly and with a single case. Declaratory judgment, where the courts resolve a dispute before it reaches a critical point, is part of the design.

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

#190

Post by thaumaturgy »

justinzollars wrote: post #40

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 censorsh…

As a fellow Democrat, I'm deeply disappointed to hear this. First, it's not a conservative argument in favor of free speech, because their criticisms of limits to free speech are limited to speech that they support.

Second, the first amendment is clearly and unambiguously intended to protect the right to free speech from governmental interference. There are myriad outlets for speech, and as long as that continues to be the case, you can't just handwave something like "corporate censorship dampens the spirit of free speech". Argue from facts, not ideology: show that it's actually happening.

Further, there is no argument for making Twitter, Google, Facebook, CloudFlare, or any other company into a public utility that wouldn't also apply to Fox News, Clear Channel, or the Drudge Report, and compel them to publish liberal views.

Alex Jones is facing backlash from these companies not because of his reprehensible politics, but because he has been inciting violence against other people and these companies, finally, are taking some responsibility for their role in that. Maybe when he finally stops trying to convince people to go after the families of Sandy Hook victims or "investigate" pizza shops, he'll be let back onto the playground to play with the other kids.

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