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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

#161

Post by onemoresoop »

School-Cotton wrote: post #65
asdkhadsj wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think your water company should pick and choose? How about your electric company? Maybe they can charge you a higher electric rate during Game of Thrones because they know you want your power more than normal then? etc I don't want a company picking and choosing which bytes of mine are fast or slow. I'm buying byte containers, their job is to ship them. I dictate how fast, and who it gets shipped to. End of de…

Actually, electric companies already do charge higher rates at different times when demand is higher.

Yes, but electric companies don't charge differently for different appliances that one is using (they couldn't know anyway), but it's applying those high peak rates globally and indiscriminately. The problem with internet post net neutrality is that internet providers could pick and choose based on what service one uses.

And we all know that internet providers try to be something else besides moving the byte across the network. They want to be telcos, they want a share of the media and grab whatever they could get their hands on. Net neutrality, from my understanding, attempted to prevent just that.

I would be OK with whatever speed I want to purchase and be stuck with that speed no matter what content I am choosing to consume. And in high demand if they chose to charge higher rates indiscriminately I'd be OK with that.

If their pipes are at full capacity they should charge more but indiscriminately!

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

#162

Post by smsm42 »

twblalock wrote: post #135
smsm42 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

It seems to me that it would be "lawfare" either way -- either the states would sue the Federal government or the Federal government would sue the states.

Lawfare is not when just somebody sues somebody else. It's when lawsuits are used to achieve goals that go way beyond and not connected with upholding the law - such as to enforce specific policy through courts, failing to pass it through legislative or executive branches.

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

#163

Post by moorhosj »

fein wrote: post #129
moorhosj wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

==Freedom of speech isn't just saying what you want while alone on your back patio.== It's also not going onto other people's property and doing whatever you want. Having a successful platform doesn't make them the government.

> It's also not going onto other people's property and doing whatever you want. It is when that property is considered the public space. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marsh_v._Alabama The internet should be regulated in the same way with defacto monopolies over "public" communications wrt. Twitter, FB, YT, etc.

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 advertisements" to AOL customers. AOL installed software to block those emails. Cyber Promotions sued on free speech grounds and cited the Marsh case as authority for the proposition that even though AOL's servers were private property, AOL had opened them to the public to a degree sufficient that constitutional free speech protections could be applied.

The federal district court disagreed, thereby paving the way for spam filters at the Internet service provider level."

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

#164

Post by onemoresoop »

I was wondering whether post the net neutrality repeal any IP has actually started tiered internet packages based on what content is being accessed, whether they stared throttling as many were fearing. If they hadn't it doesn't mean that they won't, was just curious if it's happened yet

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

#165

Post by eric_h »

fbonetti wrote: post #134
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…

Electricity, water, cable, and phone are all "natural" monopolies because of the significant amount of infrastructure they require. Having private companies lay their own competing water mains would be an absolute clusterfuck. Facebook is, at the end of the day, a website that happens to be popular right now. It's not even close to being a public utility. Anybody can enter the space and create a competing service. Gi…

> I'll be surprised if it's still around in 10 years.

I agree that facebook the site, in its current form, is unlikely to exist in 10 years. I highly doubt that facebook the company is going anywhere in that time frame.

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

#166

Post by fein »

moorhosj wrote: post #163
fein wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's also not going onto other people's property and doing whatever you want. It is when that property is considered the public space. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marsh_v._Alabama The internet should be regulated in the same way with defacto monopolies over "public" communications wrt. Twitter, FB, YT, etc.

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?

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

#167

Post by lovehashbrowns »

fein wrote: post #129
moorhosj wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

==Freedom of speech isn't just saying what you want while alone on your back patio.== It's also not going onto other people's property and doing whatever you want. Having a successful platform doesn't make them the government.

> It's also not going onto other people's property and doing whatever you want. It is when that property is considered the public space. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marsh_v._Alabama The internet should be regulated in the same way with defacto monopolies over "public" communications wrt. Twitter, FB, YT, etc.

The AOL case wasn't merely about spam--you can't pretend that it was. Here's part of the opinion:

> By providing its members with access to the Internet through its e-mail system so that its members can exchange information with those members of the public who are also connected to the Internet, AOL is not exercising any of the municipal powers or public services traditionally exercised by the State as did the private company in Marsh. Although AOL has technically opened its e-mail system to the public by connecting with the Internet, AOL has not opened its property to the public by performing any municipal power or essential public service and, therefore, does not stand in the shoes of the State.

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

#168

Post by Calib3r »

monocasa wrote: post #102
craftyguy wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because federal law overrules state law The FCC does not (and cannot) pass laws.

The FCC gains it's authority to create regulation from federal law though.

Which many argue as unconstitutional.

We've essentially given an unelected group of people a blank check.

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

#169

Post by shkkmo »

NickM wrote: post #118
shkkmo wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe all the states that currently have recreation cannabis have it because of referendums and ballot initiatives. The legalization process has shown exactly how our legislatures have failed to address this issue. Canada did legalize recreational use with legislation, but they are the only ones so far. I personally blame gerrymandering.

Vermont recently legalized it via the legislature, though I think your main point still stands.

Ah yes, their law did go into effect last month didn't it. Reading up on it, it sounds like Vermont has taken an approach like DC where commercial sales are not allowed, but personal possession, cultivation, and gifting are.

I wonder if we'll look back in 10 years and wish more places had taken these approaches, or if they well eventually also enact commercial legislation.

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

#170

Post by RIMR »

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…

This is going too far.

The Internet absolutely should be classified as a public utility, but the services on it should never be considered as such.

Telephones are a public utility, but a conference room service is not. This is by design, because the conference room service isn't integral to having a telephone system, but having a telephone system is integral to having a conference room service.

Likewise, the Internet is integral to accessing all of the sites that you visit, but all of the sites that you visit are not integral to the existence and continued functioning of the Internet.

You're suggesting that once a privately owned website grows large enough, that the private entity controlling should lose control of the service they created. I am curious where you would draw the line. If Facebook and Twitter are Public Utilities, what about Reddit? What about that web forum you're running in AWS that just hit 10,000 active users? What about a popular personal blog with server-side comments?

Classifying individual websites as public utilities was never the mission of net neutrality to begin with, and could actually be harmful. If such rules were to exist, all of the content-based censorship arguments against Facebook and Twitter for removing hate-speech from their platforms would be validated, because as public utilities these websites would have no right to moderate their own platforms anymore without government oversight.

Furthermore, it would give our government control over social networks, as they are now a highly-regulated public utility.

And how messy would it be for a website like Facebook to many any major change to their platform once such a rule took effect? By classifying it as a Public Utility, any feature Facebook added would be unable to be removed without a plausible argument that users were being robbed of utility. This would kill innovation, because why would any website implement a feature when doing so could result in immediate lawsuits, and the removal of such a feature once launched would be virtually impossible without legal consequences?

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