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Mozilla Files Suit Against FCC to Protect Net Neutrality
- urda 9y agoMozilla is one of the few groups on the internet I'm proud to support. Keep up the good fight!
- msla 9y agoI supported them until the adware incident.
- benatkin 9y agoPlease rethink your position. There are many people who genuinely care about freedom and privacy working at Mozilla, while at Facebook, Google, and Apple, developers are selling us out every day.
- maxlybbert 9y agoI’m sure there are many people working at Facebook, Google and Apple who also genuinely care about freedom and privacy, while there are developers working at Mozilla who are just as willing to sell out users as anyone. It is true that Mozilla’s a nonprofit, but that doesn’t mean a lot to me when I try to guess what they’ll do in the future.
- Larrikin 9y agoI think his point was that instead of throwing your hands up in the air and declaring all options to be equally terrible, it might be better to support actors that are generally good.
- stochastic_monk 9y agoFalse equivalence is the moral reasoning du jour, didn't you hear?
- maxlybbert 9y agoThe original comment seemed to be “sure, some people working for Mozilla are bad, but some are good, and some people working for their competitors are also bad.” My points were (1) the statement didn’t actually say anything interesting because it only talked about some of the people working at each company (i.e., it was just as true if you switched the company names around), (2) all companies are made up of people, so it’s hardly a surprise that some of those people have admirable motives and others don’t, and (3) “nonprofit” doesn’t necessarily mean “good,” or “pure in heart,” or whatever people seem to think it does.
- zbraniecki 9y ago> It is true that Mozilla’s a nonprofit, but that doesn’t mean a lot to me when I try to guess what they’ll do in the future. It should tho. Mozilla is not free of mistakes, but they're recognized as such, and handled as such. Thanks to the non-profit status none of the bad decisions Mozilla made was a result of conflict of interests. source: I work for Mozilla
- maxlybbert 9y agoMy original comment was ambiguous: (1) I didn’t predict Firefox OS, Rust, the current branding push (moz://a), cancelation of particular projects, the switch to Yahoo search and the recent switch back to Google, etc., and (2) I didn’t expect any of Mozilla’s political activity, including this lawsuit. Knowing that Mozilla qualifies as a nonprofit in the US doesn’t make its behavior any easier to predict. I believe that Mozilla’s nonprofit status requires it to show “community support” in the form of donations from a lot of people, so the tax status does influence the foundation’s policies in some way (e.g., policies can’t upset too many donors), but I think that influence is pretty limited. Mozilla has to make do with the same imperfect people as everyone else. —— Even though I’m bad at it, I will make one prediction: suing the federal government is expensive. Obviously Mozilla will use the lawsuit as a fundraising opportunity. If the suit is successful, they will have another reason to be mentioned in history books. But if the suit fails, or if the fundraising doesn’t work out, this might end up as a very costly mistake.
- lmm 9y agoPlenty of bad decisions from Mozilla were the results of conflicts of interest - between their desire to be useful to users in the immediate term and their desire to push for a better web in the long term, or between individual employees' views and the organisation's interests, or even between their users' interests and the organisation's desire for money (the default search provider) - being a nonprofit doesn't mean you don't want money, it just means you spend everything you get, managers who want to empire-build still want to increase their revenue even in a non-profit. Mozilla is exempt from one very specific set of interests that other web organisations have. They still have a vast number of competing interests to consider in their decisionmaking. Indeed Google's controlling shareholders, being mostly billionaires, may well exert less pressure in practice than Mozilla's donors.
- ocdtrekkie 9y agoIt is hard, at this point, to claim that people working to advance the success of companies like Google and Facebook genuinely care about freedom and privacy. If they did, they would quit, and go work for competitors. The sort of talent these companies bring in have high incomes and are extremely sought after... it's not like they don't have a choice.
- earenndil 9y agoBingo. All corporations have employees who have consumers' best interests at heart, and ones who don't. But a corporation exists as its own entity, and as an entity, google, facebook, and apple are against consumers, while mozilla is not.
- NickHolt 9y ago> Apple Do you have specific examples? I don't usually see instances of Apple being more than price-gougers who do a decent job with privacy, and I'm interested in learning more.
- earenndil 9y agoThey participated in PRISM[1], essentially an NSA-sponsored backdoor. For the most part, however, I agree that they're significantly better than most other giant corporations. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program)
- msla 9y agoThe fact Mozilla sold out its users to the makers of a TV show proves they're no different.
- Boothroid 9y agoAgreed
- zo1 9y agoI supported until they started redirecting funds to some Social activism communities masquerading as "open source" projects.
- dingo_bat 9y agoI supported them until they kicked out Brendan Eich over his personal political leanings.
- dcow 9y agoI spend a non-zero amount of time fantasizing about how I'll be socially lynched out of my well-earned livelihood someday for some comment I made 40 years ago on Facebook–like personalities are etched in stone. I never used to do that.
- arca_vorago 9y agoThink about the presidents and politicians of the future. Every internet comment scrutinized, diced and then selectively used to attack/discredit when some entity desires to. It's a little scary, because when you feel like you are being watched (even if the "watching" is future walking the cat back from NSA archives), your speech is chilled.
- orcdork 9y agoHow dare they kick out the guy that's so anti-gay marriage, he donated money to that "cause".
- dingo_bat 9y agoDo you want a world in which you're kicked out of your job because of the politics you support? It's antithetical to a society based on free speech.
- orcdork 9y agoI want a society where this kind of backwards, reductive and downright hateful notions, passed as "free speech", "politics" or just "speaking my mind, bro" have no place. And i do want (and in some cases expect) organizations to support that kind of society and show the door to people holding these views.
- msla 9y agoI wonder if the fact they bundled adware/spyware in with their browser will affect this.
- AsyncAwait 9y agoIf you're talking about the Mr. Robot controversy, that wasn't spyware.
- Sylos 9y agoNot even adware or an ad in the state it was rolled out either, as it did nothing, except checking for an about:config-flag. If you manually enabled this flag, then it would have flipped around a few words.
- msla 9y agoWe don't fully know that. We know it was forced onto browsers in a manner which reeks of spyware.
- AsyncAwait 9y agoWe do know it, the extension is open-source [1]. The addon does nothing unless enabled via about:config and even then, it does not spy on you. 1 - https://github.com/mozilla/addon-wr https://github.com/mozilla/addon-wr
- j_s 9y agoIn case you're not aware (and for anyone curious enough to look), the extension was changed dramatically within days of when the story hit the fan. It's really hard for someone as inexperienced as me to tell what was actually run! https://github.com/mozilla/addon-wr/commit/7d4e422bf573f675beabce89876efc0efed0b021 https://github.com/mozilla/addon-wr/commit/7d4e422bf573f675b... I believe it did technically run enough code to decide whether or not it was enabled, and I'm not sure whether or not its installation was avoidable (I believe enabling SHIELD studies is opt-in [perhaps part of opting in to analytics?]).
- bluetwo 9y agoGood luck! One more vote in the senate and they can pass a bill to do this. It seems the major providers are holding off on any large changes until they feel it is safe from political blowback. I find this interesting.
- dragonwriter 9y ago> One more vote in the senate and they can pass a bill to do this Which would matter a lot more if the US had a unicameral legislature with no executive veto; the Senate passing a CRA bill shooting down the FCC repeal of open internet rules would be a potent symbol, but have no binding effect since it has near zero chance in the House and, doesn't have the supermajority in either chamber needed to survive a near-certain Presidential veto.
- tomger 9y agoThis is great! Though I wonder if there’s anything more we can do than call our representative like the article suggests.
- pqh 9y agoMy rep sent a canned, formal-language-adorned "get stuffed" in response.
- xahrepap 9y agoMine replied with a canned response basically saying, "thanks for caring! Our senator supports the FCC... blah blah" It was mildly insulting. The thing was clear they didn't even read it and assumed I was clueless.
- j_s 9y agoWhat means did you use to share your concern? AFAIK there's a reason a phone call is recommended: letters barely matter, and emails/electronic form submissions are basically equivalent to not sent.
- satiespickles 9y agoI don't know. Something is going on in my locale. I contacted my legislators about this a couple of times (maybe more?) first by email and then by phone. This was before Pai did the inevitable. The staff who answered the call were variable in how aware they seemed to be about net neutrality. Some of them seemed to know what I was talking about, and others seemed clueless. At the time, maybe a week or two later, I got a typical kind of response. I wouldn't say it was canned, but maybe something like that, explaining their position and so forth, which I knew. I've received many of these types of responses over the years on various issues (I'm not saying all the responses I've received have been like this, but a lot of them have been). The thing that's strange is that the last couple of days, about the time the dems managed to gather their 50 votes, I started getting these emails from some of the same legislators explaining that they were crafting a response. These were legislators that already replied to me, a couple of months ago or so, and the vibe I got was that they wanted to reapproach the issue or something. I've received one of these letters, and the overall position hasn't changed, but it was more detailed and a little more defensive or something. I'm not sure what's going on, but my gut impression is that the GOP legislators here are realizing they're on the minority end of this issue with regard to public opinion, and are trying to reapproach voters with a different PR spin, trying to do damage control and a "do-over" on an issue they weren't paying too much attention to before. They seem a little nervous about their position to me, even if they haven't changed it formally.
- MollyR 9y agoWhy is the EFF not doing this instead of Mozilla ? Also I hope people still pursue municipal broadband, even with NN relying on faceless corporations seems like a bad idea.
- neduma 9y agoWhy Google/Netflix is not doing this instead of Mozilla?
- MollyR 9y agoEFF's mission statement : ... . Founded in 1990, EFF champions user privacy, free expression, and innovation through impact litigation, policy analysis, grassroots activism, and technology development... https://www.eff.org/about https://www.eff.org/about
- anfedorov 9y agoNot a lawyer, but would guess because it would be a waste of their lawyer's and the court's time.
- IncRnd 9y agoWhat would they legally sue for? Just suing for an environment that existed for only 2 years, because they feel it is right, is not the purpose of a lawsuit. That needs to come through legislation.
- earenndil 9y agoBecause it is in google/netflix's interest that net neutrality be abolished.
- newtonmeters 9y agoTest
- Ajedi32 9y agoSo, legally speaking, does Mozilla have any ground to stand on here? I'm having trouble imagining what law might exist that would legally require the FCC to enforce NN rules. Especially given the rules the FCC overturned here were originally instituted only 3 years ago. Could Mozilla have successfully sued the FCC back then if they'd failed to create these rules in the first place?
- joshuaheard 9y agoI would like to read the suit, because I don't think they have a leg to stand on. If the FCC can make the regulations, they can rescind them. The only thing maybe is process, but that only delays the inevitable.
- lr4444lr 9y agoAm I the only person who thinks this whole approach to Net Neutrality is wrongly pursued through the FCC? Hear me out: if the networks don't access a physically limited resource like the RF spectrum and there isn't any censorship issue at stake, if the issue is truly differential access and usage due to oligopolistic limitation, isn't it for the FTC to intervene and bust up throttling and content blocks under restraint of trade doctrine?
- foota 9y agoThe mission of the FCC according to wikipedia is to "make available so far as possible, to all the people of the United States, without discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, or sex, rapid, efficient, Nationwide, and world-wide wire and radio communication services with adequate facilities at reasonable charges." Net neutrality sounds consistent with this to me.
- lr4444lr 9y agoFrom what I read, the whole issue turns on the definition of broadband as a Common Carrier according to the suit from Mozilla, which is alleging that the FCC's decision falls under the Arbitrary and Capricious standard. But in the case cited for precedent, the telecoms didn't challenge the FCC's prior claim that Common Carrier applied. If they can successfully do that, then the FCC is free again to abdicate NN regulations. Again, I am not anti-NN. I just think the stronger legal justification, precedent, and evidence is going to be found in antitrust law.
- ocdtrekkie 9y agoThis can only be fixed by the FTC, yes. But it's against Google's interests for antitrust law to come back into vogue, so they've put a lot of money into getting folks on board with the FCC, which doesn't have jurisdiction over Google, being in charge. In fact, the Title II classification that net neutrality supporters are so big on actually exempts ISPs from FTC regulation, preventing the government from breaking up their monopolies! Net neutrality, as implemented, is really flawed in a lot of ways (there's a lot of practical uses for more limited types of Internet plans being available in world of IoT, especially), but this comment will be -4 shortly anyways. We shouldn't be regulating the Internet. We should be breaking up monopolies and fining companies for unfair business practices.
- OptionX 9y agoI think that most efforts to revert the Net Neutrality to the Obama-era state is severely hampered by how much the current administration is swayed by lobbyists. Though sad, the only course of action that seems available now is damage control until the next elections. I do still fully support Mozilla's efforts in the matter anyway.
- zaidf 9y agoLobbyists provide a better ROI than most lawsuits.
- exabrial 9y agoThis is an unpopular opinion, but the disagreement point is trying to use the FCC to enforce Net Neutrality, not Net Neutrality itself. Since everyone has decided to stop talking about the end goal (an open internet) and instead insisting "my way or the highway", we've gotten ourselves to this point. Thank you for your downvotes. I'd rather talk about working together towards an end goal and finding similarities instead of differences.
- drawkbox 9y agoFTC probably can't enforce net neutrality, this came from one of their commissioners [1]: > The Federal Trade Commission will not be able to fill the gap created by the FCC’s abdication of its authority and sector-specific mandate. After-the-fact antitrust and consumer protection enforcement by the FTC cannot substitute for clear upfront rules, especially given that vertically integrated broadband ISPs have both the incentive and ability to favor their own content or that of paid “partners” over the content of rivals. Only thing the FTC can do is after the damage fines, which will be underwhelming. Rules/law needs to stop ISPs upfront, this is why they want it away from the FCC and on the FTC. ISPs would rather win in the marketplace, get their monopolies cutting out competition, then pay a fine rather than innovating to compete. Upfront rules about net neutrality are needed to help create the next Google/Apple/Netflix/Facebook that would be crushed without it. [1] https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/public_statements/1293263/mcsweeny_statement_on_net_neutrality_vote_-_dec_14_2017.pdf https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/public_statements...
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- yoshuaw 9y agoIt's great that Mozilla is stepping up to do the right thing. Hope that other tech giants follow suit.
- zouhair 9y agoHow much money the tax payer gonna waste on these law suits?
- bb88 9y agoEither you do net neutrality or you do all of the following: 1) Remove "franchises" from localities. 2) Simplify right of way provisions to allow new cable to be buried easily. 3) Companies with installed poles must allow fiber to be run across them. (If they don't like that, go underground) 4) ISP's must tell consumers in plain english what restrictions exist on their service. Bandwidth caps. Throttled or Blocked ports, protocols, and sites.
- wadkar 9y agoWhat about privacy? How about: 5) ISP's must tell consumers in plain English that no information will be stored or used for any other purpose than providing the user with internet connectivity.
- matt4077 9y agoNone of these have any power to mitigate the risks net neutrality is supposed to tackle, namely providers using their customer base to squeeze third parties that wish to reach them.
- bb88 9y agoIf you make the ISP market a truly competitive market then the market will come to a natural equilibrium, hopefully addressing those concerns. But as long as ISPs hold artificial monopolies in localities, it is anything but a free market.
- dingo_bat 9y agoHow about Mozilla first address the bias against certain people in in their own offices? Then they can fight for other kinds of neutralities.
- smsm42 9y agoCan somebody explain to me what is the base of the lawsuit? I mean, it looks to me if FCC has the right to introduce certain rules for Internet providers that Mozilla supposedly liked, in 2015, then they have the right to revert those rules back to pre-2015 state as well? So what is the basis for the legal claim against them? Or is this a kind of lawsuit like "we don't like it so we sue you, and as for legal basis we'll think of something"? I don't think that's how law and lawsuits should work... Am I missing something? I.e., the matter is clearly political, so if Mozilla lobbied the Congress for it, it'd be clearly the right thing to do. But lawsuit implies there's already a law that mandates the result Mozilla wants, and FCC is violating this law. What law is this? How comes this law wasn't enforced before 2015 - was it created later? The only argument I find is "it is arbitrary and capricious" - which sounds clearly false to me. Even if you are NN supporter, you can't fail to recognize there is a certain political theory behind what FCC is doing, and even if you completely disagree with this theory and think it is very harmful, you can not ignore that FCC is doing this for a specific reason and not just "arbitrarily". Can someone explain to me what serious arguments Mozilla has here?
- superioritycplx 9y agoMore than anything else, Mozilla is in the business of virtue signalling.
- boomboomsubban 9y ago>I mean, it looks to me if FCC has the right to introduce certain rules for Internet providers that Mozilla supposedly liked, in 2015, then they have the right to revert those rules back to pre-2015 state as well? So what is the basis for the legal claim against them? Basically, the law all of this is based on largely predates the internet. The 2015 rules the FCC pushed forward by saying they were considered "common carriers" under the 1934 Communications act, which mandates that preferential treatment isn't shown, allowing net neutrality. The current decision changed their classification as "common carriers," so they aren't legally required to enforce net neutrality. Mozilla is arguing that they're clearly common carriers, the court agreed that they were, and changing their status would violate the law. The political theory around the FCC hasn't been updated sufficiently, they were mandated to deal with telephone lines and much of their control over the internet is based on vague interpretation. This was always going to be decided by the courts or congress, the FCC had no certain power.
- MikkoFinell 9y agoThis is what Mozilla is squandering donations on? Glad I canceled. I'm all for net neutrality like everyone else here, but please let's be realistic.
- supermatt 9y agoSurely the easiest way to ensure net neutrality would be for the large players (google, facebook, etc) to band together and blacklist the networks for those providers who oppose net neutrality. Give them a taste of their own medicine. Of course, I suppose that as its Mozilla pursuing legal actions it goes to show how just little Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc, actually care about net neutrality.
- codefolder 9y agoI lost respect for Mozilla when they gave up the curved edge on the
- codefolder 9y agoWhere they gave up their core principles. When shall I say. Edge was legacy. Edge was curve. Edge was not straight. Edge was culture betrayed. When Mozilla left the soft curve edge for the sake of efficiency, they described themselves as compromize apologists. One: betraying the userbase by destroying the app ecosystem, breaking the entire landscape of usable implements. Fuck Mozilla.
- codefolder 9y agoChrome is corporate. The ambiguous edge of lackey capitalizm. Thee weil do no evil, bullshit ee ching. Microsoft, a problem since Windows 95. So, what are we left with? Weir left with a system that does not have an adequate browser for all of the information pools that we have come to gather. All this data!
- calimac 9y agoMozilla lost all credibility years ago. They forced out their founder with a Lynch mob and are now controlled by weaponized political operatives.