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FCC votes to restore net neutrality rules

nytimes.com

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Re: FCC votes to restore net neutrality rules

#61

Post by wtallis »

redserk wrote: post #39
wtallis wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may not like it being pointed out, but having rules made by appointed regulators rather than elected legislators is obviously anti-democratic. Yes, delegating powers like this is a practical necessity, but having made that reasonable tradeoff does not erase the reality that it's a less than perfectly democratic process. So is the structure of Congress itself.

First, the US is not a pure democracy. We elect representatives on our behalf to handle voting on matters. So dismissing something as "anti-democratic" is not applicable here. Our elected officials set up a system where a series of agencies under the Executive Branch may create rules, but the elected officials have oversight authority. If you disagree, you may petition your state government for a constitutional amend…

> So dismissing something as "anti-democratic" is not applicable here.

[...]

> If you disagree, you may petition your state government for a constitutional amendment

I think you're misinterpreting what's being said here in order to over-react. I don't think anyone in this thread is saying that executive orders and delegating powers to appointed regulators should be expunged from our system of government. But they should be acknowledged as a necessary evil, and their use minimized when possible, and not allowed to completely replace the legislative process. Whereas you seem to be defending taking those practices to the extreme simply because of historical precedent.

Re: FCC votes to restore net neutrality rules

#62

Post by bee_rider »

theoperagoer wrote: post #38

ISPs should be allowed to throttle traffic for services. Otherwise, the result is going to be increased costs for all end-users.

ISPs should throttle for network health if necessary. This should occur in a fashion that is fair to users, some services might get hit disproportionately because they consume a lot of bandwidth, but no services should be given an exception just because they happen to be, say, provided by the ISP.

Re: FCC votes to restore net neutrality rules

#63

Post by thfuran »

cal5k wrote: post #37
tatelax wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Election coming up

All of the new "rules" being proposed by executive agencies will be subject to court challenge, and some of them (like the FTC's non-compete "rule") will likely be subject to a preliminary injunction. The goal is to get people to think "Yeah! Taking action on non-competes is great! Darn politicized courts!", when in reality this is not something an executive agency should be doing without an act of congress, or it ma…

>This is much more democratic than attempting to craft law by executive fiat

What exactly "more democratic" means is a bit unclear to me. Is an act of Congress more democratic than agency policy because more reps voted on it? Is it more democratic because the reps who voted on it were elected rather than appointed by people who were elected like over at those agencies? Or is a policy democratic based on its alignment with the will of the electorate regardless of provenance?

Re: FCC votes to restore net neutrality rules

#64

Post by gojomo »

mrguyorama wrote: post #56
SamoyedFurFluff wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I blame this squarely on the congress. Congress has been the weakest it’s ever been, passing almost nothing substantial. If we had to rely on them to ensure basic things like drug approvals we never have anything. They can barely get funding passed to fund themselves!

Why do you blame "congress" instead of Republicans?

Perhaps because Democrats control half of Congress today, and the general trend of Congressional avoidance-of-clear-rulemaking has been the same even during those periods that Dems or Republicans control both chambers.

Re: FCC votes to restore net neutrality rules

#65

Post by chimeracoder »

granzymes wrote: post #59
SeanAnderson wrote: post #13

I'm happy this reversal occurred, but I am exhausted by the continuous flip-flopping of legislation depending on which party is in charge. Feels like we're stagnating as a nation by going in a circle rather than finding commonality to go forward. Maybe it's always been this way though and I'm just getting old enough to be bothered by it?

The Supreme Court is poised to decide a case this term, Loper Bright , which should help restore more finality to decisions like this. Because agencies receive considerable deference to their interpretation of the law, even when that interpretation flip-flops every four years, we never get a definitive ruling on what the law says. The Court seems likely to greatly reduce this deference, leading to more consistency.

[flagged]

Re: FCC votes to restore net neutrality rules

#66

Post by gwbas1c »

karaterobot wrote: post #29

I'm fully in support of net neutrality, but I'm somewhat surprised they're restoring it, as I have not really heard a peep about it since it was repealed in the first place. From my perspective, nothing about the internet changed since then (my experience did not upgrade or downgrade). People stopped talking about it, there weren't major protests, news about it even largely disappeared from the front page of HN (!).…

> nothing about the internet changed since then

I had an extended outage and could not contact my ISP. They kept sending me to a bot, and I had no idea if anyone actually knew about the outage or was doing anything to fix it.

Re: FCC votes to restore net neutrality rules

#67

Post by bee_rider »

granzymes wrote: post #59
SeanAnderson wrote: post #13

I'm happy this reversal occurred, but I am exhausted by the continuous flip-flopping of legislation depending on which party is in charge. Feels like we're stagnating as a nation by going in a circle rather than finding commonality to go forward. Maybe it's always been this way though and I'm just getting old enough to be bothered by it?

The Supreme Court is poised to decide a case this term, Loper Bright , which should help restore more finality to decisions like this. Because agencies receive considerable deference to their interpretation of the law, even when that interpretation flip-flops every four years, we never get a definitive ruling on what the law says. The Court seems likely to greatly reduce this deference, leading to more consistency.

This would be an OK way of running things if we had a court with any legitimacy. Unfortunately partisanship has ruined any hope of that. (And actually, it would be better if laws could be interpretable by normal people without an SC case, but that would be too sensible).

Re: FCC votes to restore net neutrality rules

#68

Post by gwbas1c »

wtallis wrote: post #46
theoperagoer wrote: post #38

ISPs should be allowed to throttle traffic for services. Otherwise, the result is going to be increased costs for all end-users.

I think you need to provide a lot more explanation and clarification of what you mean; your comment as written sounds like nothing more than a hollow talking point. What kind of throttling in what situations would be prohibited by these regulations and how would that cause increased costs?

Maybe DDOS protection? IE: Things that ensure that a malicious user can't negatively impact other users on the network.

Re: FCC votes to restore net neutrality rules

#69

Post by miah_ »

pessimizer wrote: post #54
bearjaws wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd flip it and say its what happens when Congress has been dysfunctional for over a decade. It's not even possible to get a house bill with net neutrality passed without it included 99 other things that will inevitably get the bill punted on forever. Congress could have drafted this anytime if they had seen fit, but they are "too busy" fighting ideology wars.

> Congress could have drafted this anytime if they had seen fit, Congress as a whole does not support net neutrality, and the reason they have not drafted a simple house bill to do it that doesn't include 99 other things is because they had no desire to. It has nothing to do with "ideology wars."

Have no desire because they've been bribed, I mean lobbied.

Re: FCC votes to restore net neutrality rules

#70

Post by granzymes »

chimeracoder wrote: post #65
granzymes wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Supreme Court is poised to decide a case this term, Loper Bright , which should help restore more finality to decisions like this. Because agencies receive considerable deference to their interpretation of the law, even when that interpretation flip-flops every four years, we never get a definitive ruling on what the law says. The Court seems likely to greatly reduce this deference, leading to more consistency.

[flagged]

Hard to see how reducing deference could lead to less consistency. You are literally commenting on a post about the FCC reinterpreting their authority to regulate internet broadband years after the lawsuits over the original Net Neutrality laws concluded.

If Loper Bright had been decided ten years ago we would already know today whether the FCC possessed this authority or not and it would be settled. Instead, we are about to embark on another round of litigation because the FCC just unsettled expectations again.

Case 1: agencies reinterpret the law ever four years in each new administration until the end of time.

Case 2: we figure out what the law means once and apply it going forward until Congress changes it again.

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