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FCC won’t delay vote, says net neutrality supporters are “desperate”

arstechnica.com

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Re: FCC won’t delay vote, says net neutrality supporters are “desperate”

#151

Post by paulmd »

dsp1234 wrote: post #145
paulmd wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes this decision arbitrary or capricious? The administration and the FCC see a policy objective in deregulating the internet, just because you disagree with it doesn't make it arbitrary. It's going to have definite winners (telcoms) and losers (tech companies) but that is true of literally every type of regulation. There are respects in which, say, fracking is not the best thing for the public either (lightin…

What makes this decision arbitrary or capricious? Note that 'Arbitrary or capricious' is a legal standard of review for a government agency's decisions[0]. "In administrative law, a government agency's resolution of a question of fact, when decided pursuant to an informal rulemaking under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), is reviewed on the arbitrary and capricious standard. Arbitrary and capricious is a legal…

Sounds a lot like rational-basis but for administrative rulemaking (vs laws). i.e. the lowest possible bar the courts can impose. All you need is a reason this would accomplish some valid goal - doesn't have to be a good reason, doesn't have to have any basis in fact, it certainly doesn't have to be one you agree with. Just, "can you give me a reason for this law".

So, the reason here is "promoting competition". No need to demonstrate that this rule actually does it (in fact it does not, but that doesn't matter).

Courts ain't gonna do shit on this, sorry.

Re: FCC won’t delay vote, says net neutrality supporters are “desperate”

#152

Post by caseydurfee »

paulmd wrote: post #110
grokas wrote: post #2

After reading about Pai, it seems like he was hand selected to be the figure head with which the ISPs would finally take down Net Neutrality. This whole situation sucks, and no matter how much noise we make and activism we take part in, if Pai has the legal footing to ruin the internet, he will.

> After reading about Pai, it seems like he was hand selected to be the figure head with which the ISPs would finally take down Net Neutrality. He's not. He's a generic Republican, appointed by Obama (since the commission is obligated by Congress to have no more than a simple majority of appointees from any one party). The problem is, this is what all Republicans are like nowadays. Any other person that Obama could h…

Point of clarification: Pai was appointed to the 5 person FCC commission by Obama. He was named chairman by Trump. FWIW, the previous chairman, Tom Wheeler (ostensibly a Democrat), probably would've dismantled net neutrality if Obama hadn't come out strongly in favor of it.

I find it incredibly frustrating that people clearly see the need for referees in sports, but not in business. Nobody's saying that the NFL or the NBA would have better competition if there were no refs.

Re: FCC won’t delay vote, says net neutrality supporters are “desperate”

#153

Post by redler »

BFatts wrote: post #86
doubt_me wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its now December 2017. Everybody knew about his plan the day he was sworn in as chairman. Between the resources at Google/ Yahoo/ FB/ Ycombinator alone they have the money, lawyers, know how, and have had since November of last year to do something about this, anything. anything at all. Actually, any fortune 500 company. Not a single whisper from wall street. not a single whisper from the private sector. Obviously in…

"Between the resources at Google/ Yahoo/ FB/ Ycombinator alone they have the money, lawyers, know how, and have had since November of last year to do something about this" They did. They petitioned, used their own money, tried to convince Pai that his changes were bad. They did their part and Pai ignored them - flat out ignores them as if they don't matter. So... what about your argument works? Pai was "hired" to scr…

They did their part and Pai ignored them - flat out ignores them as if they don't matter

It's actually worse than that. He uses the imprimatur of the federal government and the commission he leads to ridicule opposing arguments. There's no honest and logical engagement; just the use of Twitterverse-ready phrases like "absurd", "desperate", and "utter nonsense".

Re: FCC won’t delay vote, says net neutrality supporters are “desperate”

#154

Post by slededit »

caseydurfee wrote: post #152
paulmd wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> After reading about Pai, it seems like he was hand selected to be the figure head with which the ISPs would finally take down Net Neutrality. He's not. He's a generic Republican, appointed by Obama (since the commission is obligated by Congress to have no more than a simple majority of appointees from any one party). The problem is, this is what all Republicans are like nowadays. Any other person that Obama could h…

Point of clarification: Pai was appointed to the 5 person FCC commission by Obama. He was named chairman by Trump. FWIW, the previous chairman, Tom Wheeler (ostensibly a Democrat), probably would've dismantled net neutrality if Obama hadn't come out strongly in favor of it. I find it incredibly frustrating that people clearly see the need for referees in sports, but not in business. Nobody's saying that the NFL or th…

There is a referee in business: the court system.

What your proposing is more like a league which will solidify the rules as they currently exist. An example of this is banning innovations like Aluminum bats.

Re: FCC won’t delay vote, says net neutrality supporters are “desperate”

#155

Post by jlgaddis »

CompuHacker wrote: post #82
Blaiz0r wrote: post #59

Is there really no alternative to using an ISP for a connection? Is it possible to build a decentralised and encrypted network on our mobile phones? I guess we still have to run traffic through mobile service providers...

Use an educational or national institution for an Internet connection, bypassing commercial networks.

Those educational networks still connect to the commercial networks, via commercial ISPs.

Re: FCC won’t delay vote, says net neutrality supporters are “desperate”

#156

Post by artursapek »

carry_bit wrote: post #131
bo1024 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, that's a good assessment. You can think of it this way: ISPs act like roads between people's houses and the sites they want to access. People currently pay ISPs to reserve a certain amount of road, and net neutrality says they can drive whatever cars they want over that fraction of road without being discriminated against in pricing or speed. The ISPs say things like "xx% of traffic is Netflix -- that uses up an…

> People currently pay ISPs to reserve a certain amount of road, and net neutrality says they can drive whatever cars they want over that fraction of road without being discriminated against in pricing or speed. In the case of roads, heavy vehicles like big rigs cause more wear-and-tear than light vehicles like compact cars. It would be fair then to charge heavy vehicles more so users of light vehicles aren't paying…

...but it wouldn't be fair to charge people using the same car more or less depending on where they are driving.

Re: FCC won’t delay vote, says net neutrality supporters are “desperate”

#157

Post by jlgaddis »

HuggableSquare wrote: post #85
arise wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are countless ways you can use traffic discrimination to pad your own pockets without adding any value to the economy. In the past we've seen ISP's block apps and websites that compete with their own services. For example, Verizon blocked tethering apps and AT&T blocked FaceTime at one point. A slightly different example is the time Comcast imposed a monthly cap on users (250 GB), but then exempted their own st…

With regards to exempting services from data caps, it's called "zero-rating" and as far as I am aware, the net neutrality laws we have on the books don't mention it (which is why mobile carriers have been doing it for years). I do believe that if you exempted only your own services you would start to fall into anti-competition territory though.

If memory serves, the current Net Neutrality doesn't apply to mobile carriers. They got exempted from that and some other rules apply in their cases.

Re: FCC won’t delay vote, says net neutrality supporters are “desperate”

#158

Post by redler »

peterwwillis wrote: post #19

Does anyone remember when Jack Valenti was widely mocked for his being instrumental in abusing the rights of consumers? There were huge campaigns against the MPAA and Valenti. Where's the PR push back from the techno-intelligentsia? Why aren't we pointing out Pai's attacks on the rights of American citizens? Why aren't we pointing out to regular people why this is clearly an attack on one of the few freedoms they hav…

By now they're probably suffering from nihilistic-destruction-of-institutions-failure-of-imagination fatigue.

Re: FCC won’t delay vote, says net neutrality supporters are “desperate”

#159

Post by carry_bit »

artursapek wrote: post #156
carry_bit wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People currently pay ISPs to reserve a certain amount of road, and net neutrality says they can drive whatever cars they want over that fraction of road without being discriminated against in pricing or speed. In the case of roads, heavy vehicles like big rigs cause more wear-and-tear than light vehicles like compact cars. It would be fair then to charge heavy vehicles more so users of light vehicles aren't paying…

...but it wouldn't be fair to charge people using the same car more or less depending on where they are driving.

Some roads have weight limits, so you're actually banned from driving certain places depending on the car you have.

Re: FCC won’t delay vote, says net neutrality supporters are “desperate”

#160

Post by mmagin »

skykooler wrote: post #121
super-serial wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was thinking of Project Fi but Google just buys the data from TMobile/Sprint/US Cellular. So the same carriers just get richer, giving them more power. There's really no way to hurt the carriers or ISPs bottom line. The only thing I can think of is supporting municipal broadband. I wish there was some generic nation-wide municipal broadband fund I could pledge to donate to if net neutrality is revoked. I'd even ple…

Project Fi also locks you into Android phones. Good luck running an iPhone, or Windows phone, or Sailfish OS phone on that.

As I understand it activation requires using an android phone, but it's entirely possible to then use it with an iPhone.
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