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Not that this will make a difference in the outcome of Thursday's vote. I urge everyone to look at the actual proposed rules, and in particular the technical b

Not that this will make a difference in the outcome of Thursday's vote. I urge everyone to look at the actual proposed rules, and in particular the technical background and explanations. Basically, if ISPs claimed something in their comments, the FCC assumes it is true and dismisses any contradictory claims submitted by others. The entire comment period was for show. Pai and his republican co-commissioners are going to jam this through regardless of what anyone says or does. He was brazen enough to admit, early on, that he does not care whether or not his plan is unpopular and that what the public thinks makes no difference whatsoever. The only way to change this is to convince Congress that this is an election issue. Unfortunately there are too many other things happening right now, so net neutrality is being drowned in the noise and will likely continue to be drowned in the noise.

epistasis 9y ago
I wonder if the lack of regulatory process, and clear corruption here, would allow for a remedy in the courts. If the FCC is not fulfilling it's obligations according to the law, in terms of addressing and considering reasonable decisions, then they may be in violation of the laws that give FCC authority in the first place. I know very little about the FCC, but the DOE and FERC, up until the latest administration, were under very clear legislative imperatives in performing reasoned and justified regulation. Typically courts are quite deferential to the regulatory agencies, but when there's clear evidence of fraud, judges have been known to go with a reasoned interpretation of the law rather than just deferring to the FCC to do whatever it wants.
- Retric 9y ago
  Existing monopoly laws could also have some bite if ISP's are not already shielded. Slow Netflix while pushing Cable subscriptions could be a rather large issue.
  - takeda 9y ago
    At this point companies like Netflix will probably do just fine (that's why they are not pressing as much about it), because of the popularity they might not even be requested to pay anything. The issue is for companies that will try to exists after that and would offer better service than Netflix. They won't succeed because: "well, the service might be cheaper and offer more shows, but it is dogshit slow and unusable/goes against my datacap so why should I use it?"
- techsupporter 9y ago
  I read...somewhere, can't find it now that I try to go looking for the source...that the most likely remedy, in that article's opinion, is the Administrative Procedures Act. The author basically said that the APA doesn't permit reversing rules without a factual basis as to why they should be reversed, particularly if the rules being reversed were recently adopted using a stronger evaluation. I'm not versed in the APA at all so I might be remembering the article wrong but it seemed reasonable.
  - shkkmo 9y ago
    I think this is the piece you are referring to: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/22/opinion/courts-net-neutrality-fcc.html?mtrref=www.google.ca&assetType=opinion https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/22/opinion/courts-net-neutra... Most relevant section: >So drastic is the reversal of policy (if, as expected, the commission approves Mr. Pai’s proposal next month), and so weak is the evidence to support the change, that it seems destined to be struck down in court. > The problem for Mr. Pai is that government agencies are not free to abruptly reverse longstanding rules on which many have relied without a good reason, such as a change in factual circumstances. A mere change in F.C.C. ideology isn’t enough. As the Supreme Court has said, a federal agency must “examine the relevant data and articulate a satisfactory explanation for its action.” Given that net neutrality rules have been a huge success by most measures, the justification for killing them would have to be very strong. However, a legal challenge will likely take a while to wend it's way to the Supreme Court.
- davidw 9y ago
  The courts that are being packed with unqualified judges? https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2017/11/12/he-has-never-tried-a-case-but-trump-wants-to-make-him-judge-for-life/?utm_term=.6916a7d790e7 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2017/11/12/h...
  - rayiner 9y ago
    The criticisms of Brett Talley are ignorant. The article talks about whether he has "tried a case" but he's an appellate lawyer, not a trial lawyer. Talley graduated near the top of his class at Harvard Law, completed appellate and district court clerkships, was Deputy Solicitor General in the Alabama Attorney General's office, and is currently at the Office of Legal Counsel. If he clocked in a few more years doing that line of work, he'd be perfectly qualified. But he still would never have "tried a case."
    - cmurf 9y ago
      The American Bar Association unanimously declared him not qualified based on his inexperience. https://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/uncategorized/GAO/TalleyratinglettertoGrassleyandFeinstein.authcheckdam.pdf https://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/uncategorized/GA...
      - rayiner 9y ago
        The ABA criteria require a judicial nominee to generally have twelve years of legal experience, which Talley obviously doesn't. If that's all the media said about Talley, that would be fine. But the criticisms go far beyond that, misrepresent the strength of the rest of his background, and veer off into ignorant assertions about "trying cases."
        CalChris 9y ago
        Judges have lifetime tenure so maybe requiring a lengthy resume isn’t such a bad idea. This strikes me as nominating a young conservative who will serve for a long time when Republicans stonewalled Obama’s very qualified nominees.
artorias 9y ago
>Pai and his republican co-commissioners are going to jam this through regardless of what anyone says or does Australian lawmakers are lauded as heroes for doing the same thing. The double think here is insane.
pythonaut_16 9y ago
I'm actually somewhat satisfied with how they're ramming this vote through right now. Not because I want to lose Net Neutrality, but because if it is going to happen, it's best that it happens now, early in Trump's term, and that the process of forcing the vote is messy. Two possible silver linings if it does get removed on the 14th: 1. We were wrong the whole time and reversing net neutrality launches us into a golden age of fast and cheap internet for all. (Very unlikely) 2. We were right, and reversing net neutrality is as bad as we feared. While it will be painful in the short term, hopefully it's bad enough to The Internet/Net Neutrality a relevant election issue for more people. Either way, the sure silver lining is that by hashing this out now the consequences will be fully felt by the time the next presidential election rolls around. Can you imagine if they were trying to shove this through in the lead up to the 2020 election when everyone is distracted by all the other issues at stake in the election?
- 8ytecoder 9y ago
  Most people are not going to realise the pain. It's one of those issues that affect people but they would never understand why. In spite of scientists saying climate change is real and it's affecting us directly (floods, heat waves,...etc) people still can't put 2 and 2 together to ask for change. I don't think ISPs would be dumb enough to drastically become cable-operatorish and charge customers for every website. The pain will be felt by small companies and competition (albeit indirectly).
  - takeda 9y ago
    I'm fairly sure they early stages will even look like it was a good change, making some people wonder why were they even fighting it. For example excluding affiliated sites from any caps (let's stream 4k movies from Hulu, RedBox etc even if you have lower bandwidth than necessary, you would be excluded for these services) or have data caps not apply for affiliated sites. For an extra fee you could also get similar treatment for non-affiliated sites (Netflix, YouTube, Amazon Video etc). In the mean time everything else will gradually is getting slower and slower. Tough luck for any new startup trying to enter the market. As it already is difficult right now, it will be nearly impossible after that. The absolutely bad things (throttling/blocking/modifying content of sites the companies don't agree with) will happen much much later.
setecgastronomy 9y ago
> He was brazen enough to admit, early on, that he does not care whether or not his plan is unpopular and that what the public thinks makes no difference whatsoever. Looks like it. It's pretty surprising how ambivalent the guy is to public pressure. Also, we really need to look into how government and regulation works in this country. What's the point of having a regulatory system for industries if the officials of companies in these industry lead the governmental/regulatory agencies? If former goldman sachs officials run financial agencies and if a former verizon official runs the FCC, what's the point of these agencies?
- betterunix2 9y ago
  There is nothing specific wrong with industry people working at regulatory agencies; in fact, good regulation should include the input of the regulated industries (failure to do so was a causative factor in the bankruptcy of railroads in the 60s and 70s). The problem with this proceeding is that it is based only on industry comments and ignores other voices, which is the worst way to create regulation. Remember that Wheeler was a former cable industry lobbyist. Unlike Pai, he actually listened to non-industry voices during his proceeding and created rules based on inputs from many different sources. He did not give net neutrality advocates everything we wanted, but he did listen and did create something much better than what the industry has been demanding.
  - ajnin 9y ago
    Industry people working at regulatory agencies is an obvious conflict of interest. Taking inputs from various parties, including the industry and the general public, to then make an informed decision about the best course of action in the general interest, is a completely different thing.
    - betterunix2 9y ago
      "Industry people working at regulatory agencies is an obvious conflict of interest." Not necessarily. An obvious conflict of interest would be someone who has a significant financial stake in the industry, or someone who is married to a CEO in that industry, etc. Also consider this: who is actually qualified to regulate an industry? It is often the case that the only qualified candidates are people who have worked in the industry or who have worked against it (which is just as much of a conflict of interest). Someone who is clueless could be worse: they could be more susceptible to lobbying pressure, since they have no prior knowledge of the issues they are dealing with. In theory the job of the Senate should be to determine whether or not a candidate will be able to serve the public instead of their former industry bosses. Such people definitely exist -- Tom Wheeler is a prominent example. We also have an impeachment procedure to deal with the possibility of failure i.e. the possibility of the Senate confirming a regulator who fails to serve the public; by now there is ample evidence that confirming Pai was a mistake, but with today's hyper-partisan Congress there is not much hope for impeachment.
CamperBob2 9y ago
The only way to change this is to convince Congress that this is an election issue. Here's what I don't understand, maybe someone has some insights. Demographics is not on the side of the Republicans. It hasn't been for a long time, and the imbalance is getting worse, not only because of immigration but because the Republicans depend on older white voters. That cohort isn't growing at the rate it needs to, if the Republicans are to continue to win elections at either the local or national level. If they aren't careful, many of the gerrymandered districts they've constructed so carefully will turn into electoral deathtraps. So, given that they must expand their appeal to younger, more diverse voters, why are they choosing this hill to die on? Internet regulation is one of the vanishingly-few issues that actually gets young people involved in the political system. It gets them to sign petitions, call their representatives, and -- who knows? -- maybe even vote. If and when the ISPs follow through on their newly-granted powers to balkanize and channelize the Web, the outrage will be seismic. Young people and old people alike will remember who made it happen, and will respond accordingly. Every race, every gender, every faith, and almost every individual has a stake in this issue. The rest of the Republican agenda will be imperiled by the resulting groundswell, as people who wouldn't otherwise have bothered to vote do so. In American politics, you can collude with foreign and domestic enemies to install raving demagogues, you can raise peoples' taxes, you can even start wars, but you do not mess with the Internet. The SOPA/PIPA fiasco should have made that clear enough. What exactly is the GOP expecting to happen here?
- marshray 9y ago
  > given that they must expand their appeal to younger, more diverse voters They gave up trying to appeal to more diverse voters long ago and are becoming increasingly desperate. So desperate that in the last election they took hacking assistance from a foreign adversary. > why are they choosing this hill to die on? They're not. Almost no one outside of our bubble will think about this when they go to vote. On the other hand, this move may be expected to result in substantial campaign contributions from those who stand to benefit.
tzs 9y ago
> I urge everyone to look at the actual proposed rules, and in particular the technical background and explanations. They aren't even trying to make sensible, plausible justifications. For example, see paragraph 252, where they discuss paid prioritization. They say ISPs need it because ISPs may not be able to figure out how to do usage based billing of their customers, so they need to be able to make sites like Netflix pay instead.
throwawaymanbot 9y ago
I still believe that if the BIG tech companies raise enough stink, that he will back down. I'm curious as to why I have heard nothing in the media from facebook or google or anyone else like them.

epistasis 9y ago

I wonder if the lack of regulatory process, and clear corruption here, would allow for a remedy in the courts. If the FCC is not fulfilling it's obligations according to the law, in terms of addressing and considering reasonable decisions, then they may be in violation of the laws that give FCC authority in the first place. I know very little about the FCC, but the DOE and FERC, up until the latest administration, were under very clear legislative imperatives in performing reasoned and justified regulation. Typically courts are quite deferential to the regulatory agencies, but when there's clear evidence of fraud, judges have been known to go with a reasoned interpretation of the law rather than just deferring to the FCC to do whatever it wants.

Retric 9y ago
Existing monopoly laws could also have some bite if ISP's are not already shielded. Slow Netflix while pushing Cable subscriptions could be a rather large issue.
- takeda 9y ago
  At this point companies like Netflix will probably do just fine (that's why they are not pressing as much about it), because of the popularity they might not even be requested to pay anything. The issue is for companies that will try to exists after that and would offer better service than Netflix. They won't succeed because: "well, the service might be cheaper and offer more shows, but it is dogshit slow and unusable/goes against my datacap so why should I use it?"
techsupporter 9y ago
I read...somewhere, can't find it now that I try to go looking for the source...that the most likely remedy, in that article's opinion, is the Administrative Procedures Act. The author basically said that the APA doesn't permit reversing rules without a factual basis as to why they should be reversed, particularly if the rules being reversed were recently adopted using a stronger evaluation. I'm not versed in the APA at all so I might be remembering the article wrong but it seemed reasonable.
- shkkmo 9y ago
  I think this is the piece you are referring to: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/22/opinion/courts-net-neutrality-fcc.html?mtrref=www.google.ca&assetType=opinion https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/22/opinion/courts-net-neutra... Most relevant section: >So drastic is the reversal of policy (if, as expected, the commission approves Mr. Pai’s proposal next month), and so weak is the evidence to support the change, that it seems destined to be struck down in court. > The problem for Mr. Pai is that government agencies are not free to abruptly reverse longstanding rules on which many have relied without a good reason, such as a change in factual circumstances. A mere change in F.C.C. ideology isn’t enough. As the Supreme Court has said, a federal agency must “examine the relevant data and articulate a satisfactory explanation for its action.” Given that net neutrality rules have been a huge success by most measures, the justification for killing them would have to be very strong. However, a legal challenge will likely take a while to wend it's way to the Supreme Court.
davidw 9y ago
The courts that are being packed with unqualified judges? https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2017/11/12/he-has-never-tried-a-case-but-trump-wants-to-make-him-judge-for-life/?utm_term=.6916a7d790e7 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2017/11/12/h...
- rayiner 9y ago
  The criticisms of Brett Talley are ignorant. The article talks about whether he has "tried a case" but he's an appellate lawyer, not a trial lawyer. Talley graduated near the top of his class at Harvard Law, completed appellate and district court clerkships, was Deputy Solicitor General in the Alabama Attorney General's office, and is currently at the Office of Legal Counsel. If he clocked in a few more years doing that line of work, he'd be perfectly qualified. But he still would never have "tried a case."
  - cmurf 9y ago
    The American Bar Association unanimously declared him not qualified based on his inexperience. https://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/uncategorized/GAO/TalleyratinglettertoGrassleyandFeinstein.authcheckdam.pdf https://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/uncategorized/GA...
    - rayiner 9y ago
      The ABA criteria require a judicial nominee to generally have twelve years of legal experience, which Talley obviously doesn't. If that's all the media said about Talley, that would be fine. But the criticisms go far beyond that, misrepresent the strength of the rest of his background, and veer off into ignorant assertions about "trying cases."
      - CalChris 9y ago
        Judges have lifetime tenure so maybe requiring a lengthy resume isn’t such a bad idea. This strikes me as nominating a young conservative who will serve for a long time when Republicans stonewalled Obama’s very qualified nominees.

artorias 9y ago

>Pai and his republican co-commissioners are going to jam this through regardless of what anyone says or does Australian lawmakers are lauded as heroes for doing the same thing. The double think here is insane.

pythonaut_16 9y ago

I'm actually somewhat satisfied with how they're ramming this vote through right now. Not because I want to lose Net Neutrality, but because if it is going to happen, it's best that it happens now, early in Trump's term, and that the process of forcing the vote is messy. Two possible silver linings if it does get removed on the 14th: 1. We were wrong the whole time and reversing net neutrality launches us into a golden age of fast and cheap internet for all. (Very unlikely) 2. We were right, and reversing net neutrality is as bad as we feared. While it will be painful in the short term, hopefully it's bad enough to The Internet/Net Neutrality a relevant election issue for more people. Either way, the sure silver lining is that by hashing this out now the consequences will be fully felt by the time the next presidential election rolls around. Can you imagine if they were trying to shove this through in the lead up to the 2020 election when everyone is distracted by all the other issues at stake in the election?

8ytecoder 9y ago
Most people are not going to realise the pain. It's one of those issues that affect people but they would never understand why. In spite of scientists saying climate change is real and it's affecting us directly (floods, heat waves,...etc) people still can't put 2 and 2 together to ask for change. I don't think ISPs would be dumb enough to drastically become cable-operatorish and charge customers for every website. The pain will be felt by small companies and competition (albeit indirectly).
- takeda 9y ago
  I'm fairly sure they early stages will even look like it was a good change, making some people wonder why were they even fighting it. For example excluding affiliated sites from any caps (let's stream 4k movies from Hulu, RedBox etc even if you have lower bandwidth than necessary, you would be excluded for these services) or have data caps not apply for affiliated sites. For an extra fee you could also get similar treatment for non-affiliated sites (Netflix, YouTube, Amazon Video etc). In the mean time everything else will gradually is getting slower and slower. Tough luck for any new startup trying to enter the market. As it already is difficult right now, it will be nearly impossible after that. The absolutely bad things (throttling/blocking/modifying content of sites the companies don't agree with) will happen much much later.

setecgastronomy 9y ago

> He was brazen enough to admit, early on, that he does not care whether or not his plan is unpopular and that what the public thinks makes no difference whatsoever. Looks like it. It's pretty surprising how ambivalent the guy is to public pressure. Also, we really need to look into how government and regulation works in this country. What's the point of having a regulatory system for industries if the officials of companies in these industry lead the governmental/regulatory agencies? If former goldman sachs officials run financial agencies and if a former verizon official runs the FCC, what's the point of these agencies?

betterunix2 9y ago
There is nothing specific wrong with industry people working at regulatory agencies; in fact, good regulation should include the input of the regulated industries (failure to do so was a causative factor in the bankruptcy of railroads in the 60s and 70s). The problem with this proceeding is that it is based only on industry comments and ignores other voices, which is the worst way to create regulation. Remember that Wheeler was a former cable industry lobbyist. Unlike Pai, he actually listened to non-industry voices during his proceeding and created rules based on inputs from many different sources. He did not give net neutrality advocates everything we wanted, but he did listen and did create something much better than what the industry has been demanding.
- ajnin 9y ago
  Industry people working at regulatory agencies is an obvious conflict of interest. Taking inputs from various parties, including the industry and the general public, to then make an informed decision about the best course of action in the general interest, is a completely different thing.
  - betterunix2 9y ago
    "Industry people working at regulatory agencies is an obvious conflict of interest." Not necessarily. An obvious conflict of interest would be someone who has a significant financial stake in the industry, or someone who is married to a CEO in that industry, etc. Also consider this: who is actually qualified to regulate an industry? It is often the case that the only qualified candidates are people who have worked in the industry or who have worked against it (which is just as much of a conflict of interest). Someone who is clueless could be worse: they could be more susceptible to lobbying pressure, since they have no prior knowledge of the issues they are dealing with. In theory the job of the Senate should be to determine whether or not a candidate will be able to serve the public instead of their former industry bosses. Such people definitely exist -- Tom Wheeler is a prominent example. We also have an impeachment procedure to deal with the possibility of failure i.e. the possibility of the Senate confirming a regulator who fails to serve the public; by now there is ample evidence that confirming Pai was a mistake, but with today's hyper-partisan Congress there is not much hope for impeachment.

CamperBob2 9y ago

The only way to change this is to convince Congress that this is an election issue. Here's what I don't understand, maybe someone has some insights. Demographics is not on the side of the Republicans. It hasn't been for a long time, and the imbalance is getting worse, not only because of immigration but because the Republicans depend on older white voters. That cohort isn't growing at the rate it needs to, if the Republicans are to continue to win elections at either the local or national level. If they aren't careful, many of the gerrymandered districts they've constructed so carefully will turn into electoral deathtraps. So, given that they must expand their appeal to younger, more diverse voters, why are they choosing this hill to die on? Internet regulation is one of the vanishingly-few issues that actually gets young people involved in the political system. It gets them to sign petitions, call their representatives, and -- who knows? -- maybe even vote. If and when the ISPs follow through on their newly-granted powers to balkanize and channelize the Web, the outrage will be seismic. Young people and old people alike will remember who made it happen, and will respond accordingly. Every race, every gender, every faith, and almost every individual has a stake in this issue. The rest of the Republican agenda will be imperiled by the resulting groundswell, as people who wouldn't otherwise have bothered to vote do so. In American politics, you can collude with foreign and domestic enemies to install raving demagogues, you can raise peoples' taxes, you can even start wars, but you do not mess with the Internet. The SOPA/PIPA fiasco should have made that clear enough. What exactly is the GOP expecting to happen here?

marshray 9y ago
> given that they must expand their appeal to younger, more diverse voters They gave up trying to appeal to more diverse voters long ago and are becoming increasingly desperate. So desperate that in the last election they took hacking assistance from a foreign adversary. > why are they choosing this hill to die on? They're not. Almost no one outside of our bubble will think about this when they go to vote. On the other hand, this move may be expected to result in substantial campaign contributions from those who stand to benefit.

tzs 9y ago

> I urge everyone to look at the actual proposed rules, and in particular the technical background and explanations. They aren't even trying to make sensible, plausible justifications. For example, see paragraph 252, where they discuss paid prioritization. They say ISPs need it because ISPs may not be able to figure out how to do usage based billing of their customers, so they need to be able to make sites like Netflix pay instead.

throwawaymanbot 9y ago

I still believe that if the BIG tech companies raise enough stink, that he will back down. I'm curious as to why I have heard nothing in the media from facebook or google or anyone else like them.