How can something or someone be half-dead? Life is a binary thing, you are either YES (1) alive or NO (0) dead. I fail to comprehend how any respectable (tech) journalist would call something "half-dead". It implies there is a state between being alive and death when this is clearly not the case.
Net neutrality is half-dead: Court strikes down FCC’s anti-blocking rules
31–40 of 131 posts
Re: Net neutrality is half-dead: Court strikes down FCC’s anti-blocking rules
#32Note that the DC Court of Appeals is the one that the Filibuster Crisis was all about. According to the Wikipedia, it still(!) has three vacancies, and the Senate Republicans have spent the last ~N months preventing any of the Obama administrations nominees from being confirmed to the Court. These things matter.
The DC Circuit may have three vacancies (I'll trust your representation) but it also has the lightest workload per judge in the country: http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142405270230393690... "For the 12-months ending in September, the D.C. Circuit had 149 appeals filed per active judge. By comparison, the 11th Circuit had 778 appeals filed per active judge for the same period... The national average of appe…
Counting cases per judge is a legitimate method of weighing workload only if the cases are drawn from a similar universe. Among the geographical circuits other than the DC Circuit, this may be reasonable, given that their appellate jurisdiction is similar in subject matter. But given that the DC Circuit handles comparatively few of the kinds of cases that the other circuits handle (having only a single subordinate district court from which to handle regular appeals of the type other circuit courts handle), but has a special role handling appeals of federal regulatory decisions, you aren't comparing like cases to like cases when you compare case numbers between the DC Circuit and the other circuits. You'd run into the same kind of issue comparing the Federal Circuit to other circuits.
Of course, I'm not at all surprised to see a News Corp outlet overlook a critical distinction that is inconvenient for the propaganda interests of the Republican Party.
Re: Net neutrality is half-dead: Court strikes down FCC’s anti-blocking rules
#33Note that the DC Court of Appeals is the one that the Filibuster Crisis was all about. According to the Wikipedia, it still(!) has three vacancies, and the Senate Republicans have spent the last ~N months preventing any of the Obama administrations nominees from being confirmed to the Court. These things matter.
Not to argue your point (which is 100% right IMHO), but this decision is pretty right on the merits. They refused to classify the providers in a way that gave them express statutory authority to promulgate these regulations, and the court called them on it. I want to see this happen, but the right way is for the FCC to stop pussyfooting around and classify them as common carriers, which they are , so it can regulate…
politics before ethics. sigh, it was always thus, it shall always be.
Re: Net neutrality is half-dead: Court strikes down FCC’s anti-blocking rules
#34Note that the DC Court of Appeals is the one that the Filibuster Crisis was all about. According to the Wikipedia, it still(!) has three vacancies, and the Senate Republicans have spent the last ~N months preventing any of the Obama administrations nominees from being confirmed to the Court. These things matter.
The DC Circuit may have three vacancies (I'll trust your representation) but it also has the lightest workload per judge in the country: http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142405270230393690... "For the 12-months ending in September, the D.C. Circuit had 149 appeals filed per active judge. By comparison, the 11th Circuit had 778 appeals filed per active judge for the same period... The national average of appe…
It's misleading to compare the number of appeals per judge between the D.C. Circuit and other circuits, because the D.C. Circuit has a very different docket composition. Certain kind of appeals are much easier and quicker to resolve than others: criminal sentencing appeals, habeas petitions, immigration appeals, routine civil matters like foreclosures or certain benefits awards, etc. While the D.C. Circuit does hear these sorts of cases, it does so only for the ~600k people in the District of Columbia. The other circuits, on the other hand, have a much larger number of these cases because they cover several states and usually 20-35 million people each.
The D.C. Circuit's docket consists very disproportionately of highly complex regulatory appeals, which take much more time than simpler types of cases. These cases are not only often very factually complex, but of a nature that leaves more scope for appellate review. Roughly speaking, when a circuit court reviews the factual findings or discretionary actions of a lower court, it does so deferentially. E.g. an appellate court reviews sentences imposed by a district court only for abuse of discretion. However, a circuit court reviews the legal conclusions of a lower court from scratch (de novo). Regulatory appeals in the D.C. Circuit are much more likely to turn on complex issues of legal interpretation that the appellate court must review from scratch, than on factual disputes that the appellate court need only review for clear error.
Re: Net neutrality is half-dead: Court strikes down FCC’s anti-blocking rules
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
The DC Circuit may have three vacancies (I'll trust your representation) but it also has the lightest workload per judge in the country: http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142405270230393690... "For the 12-months ending in September, the D.C. Circuit had 149 appeals filed per active judge. By comparison, the 11th Circuit had 778 appeals filed per active judge for the same period... The national average of appe…
It's misleading to compare the number of appeals per judge between the D.C. Circuit and other circuits, because the D.C. Circuit has a very different docket composition. Certain kind of appeals are much easier and quicker to resolve than others: criminal sentencing appeals, habeas petitions, immigration appeals, routine civil matters like foreclosures or certain benefits awards, etc. While the D.C. Circuit does hear…
You're certainly right that the DC Circuit will get a disproportionate number of regulatory appeals, but we don't know whether that fact actually matters without knowing what percentage of their workload involves complex cases, and whether they need equal staffing numbers. (I don't know the answer.)
Re: Net neutrality is half-dead: Court strikes down FCC’s anti-blocking rules
#36It is obvious that they are, de facto, common carriers. Give up the lobbyist payola, reclassify them, and introduce some real competition to my now more frequent than annual Crapcast price bumps (or significant humps, as it were). (And in my case, this is primarily for Internet, although basic cable comes along as a quasi-freebie -- it costs, but then a discount on the combined package largely or totally negates that…
> and introduce some real competition You do understand that regulating carriers as if they were utilities but then demanding more competition is inconsistent? Utilities get monopoly protection in return for offering universal service. That's the quid pro quo.
Hmm ... I think that the grandparent meant that any company should be confined to doing one thing.
One company maintains and lays cables, other provides connectivity to said cables etc. Which means that you could buy connectivity to internet from various suppliers depending on your needs.
Re: Net neutrality is half-dead: Court strikes down FCC’s anti-blocking rules
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's misleading to compare the number of appeals per judge between the D.C. Circuit and other circuits, because the D.C. Circuit has a very different docket composition. Certain kind of appeals are much easier and quicker to resolve than others: criminal sentencing appeals, habeas petitions, immigration appeals, routine civil matters like foreclosures or certain benefits awards, etc. While the D.C. Circuit does hear…
You're certainly right that the DC Circuit will get a disproportionate number of regulatory appeals, but we don't know whether that fact actually matters without knowing what percentage of their workload involves complex cases, and whether they need equal staffing numbers. (I don't know the answer.)
http://www.fjc.gov/public/pdf.nsf/lookup/caseman2.pdf/$file/... (Figure 4).
The D.C. Circuit has 10% criminal cases. 5 circuits have above 25% criminal cases. The D.C. Circuit has over 30% administrative cases, most circuits have under 10%. The D.C. Circuit has almost no private prisoner cases (cases by prisoners against state officials for violations of rights), while most circuits have over 15%. The D.C. Circuit has over 20% U.S. civil cases (civil cases in which the U.S. is a defendant), while most circuits have under 5%.
Even within those divisions there are relevant distinctions. An appeal from the Board of Immigration Appeals is an "administrative" case, but it's a much simpler matter to resolve, usually, than say a challenge to an EPA regulation. So while the 9th Circuit has almost 30% "administrative cases," each of those are likely much simpler to resolve than each administrative case on the D.C. Circuit's docket (not many people are getting deported from D.C.)
Re: Net neutrality is half-dead: Court strikes down FCC’s anti-blocking rules
#38Anyone who is interested in a really good overview of 20th century telco policy should read The Master Switch by Tim Wu ( http://www.amazon.com/The-Master-Switch-Information-Empires/... ). It goes over the transition from telegraph to telephone to internet, talks about the rise of media conglomerates, and basically explains how we're in the mess we're in today. Quite an enjoyable read, especially when learning about…
I second this suggestion, The Master Switch is a great read.
Re: Net neutrality is half-dead: Court strikes down FCC’s anti-blocking rules
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not to argue your point (which is 100% right IMHO), but this decision is pretty right on the merits. They refused to classify the providers in a way that gave them express statutory authority to promulgate these regulations, and the court called them on it. I want to see this happen, but the right way is for the FCC to stop pussyfooting around and classify them as common carriers, which they are , so it can regulate…
politics before ethics. sigh, it was always thus, it shall always be.
I understand your point, but I just don't see the ethical implications. Net neutrality, may be important, but it is a legal directive. Not supporting, or actively working to abolish net neutrality, isn't unethical.
Re: Net neutrality is half-dead: Court strikes down FCC’s anti-blocking rules
#40Intuitively, I would have thought that this would be horrible news for content providers/distributors, and great news for wireless carriers. However, today, Google, Facebook, Amazon &etc are flying, while Verizon and AT&T are falling. Does anyone in the industry know what this is all about, and what importance this decision really has on the future of mobile?
Note that your flying providers are huge. The hope of network neutrality is to turn the networks into gatekeepers to eliminate competition. So say I want to create in my garage, an online store to compete with Amazon selling in the pet rock market. Oh what a pity, all your online shopping traffic got dropped at our border routers. We can "fix things" for you for a modest fee, just like Amazon. Of course we have a min…
This all sounds like a negative for the large companies I mentioned. Yeah, it's a lot worse for the small guys, under your assumptions[1], but in the end, the ISP is still taking money out of Amazon's pocket. Relatively speaking, this sounds like better news for ISPs than it is for Amazon's potential to squeeze out competition.
[1] Though, I think small sites would just engage in collective bargaining of sorts.