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Mozilla Re-Files Suit Against FCC to Protect Net Neutrality
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- mehrdadn 9y ago> the FCC’s decision to overturn the 2015 rules violates both federal law as well as harms internet users and innovators. What was illegal about the FCC decision?
- jamesgeck0 9y agoFrom the filing[1]: Mozilla seeks review of the Order on the grounds that it violates federal law, including, but not limited to, the Communications Act of 1934, 47 U.S.C. §§ 151 et seq., as amended, and the Telecommunications Act of 1996, and FCC regulations promulgated thereunder; abdicates the FCC’s statutory mandates; is arbitrary, capricious, and an abuse of discretion within the meaning of the Administrative Procedure Act, 5 U.S.C. § 701 et seq.; and is otherwise contrary to law 1. https://ffp4g1ylyit3jdyti1hqcvtb-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/as-filed-Mozilla-Petition-for-Review-WC-Docket-No.-17-108-22Feb2018.pdf https://ffp4g1ylyit3jdyti1hqcvtb-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-...
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- zootboy 9y agoI don't know what arguments Mozilla is planning on using in this suit, but one could argue that the FCC is violating their mandate to promote competition in the broadband space.
- SlowRobotAhead 9y agoMandates are't law though, right?
- wavefunction 9y agoViolating a statutory mandate would be violating a law, presumably. I am just a software engineer though so take that for what it's worth.
- dragonwriter 9y agoA legal (statutory, for instance) mandate is such exactly because it is law.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- wyager 9y agoHow does net neutrality promote broadband provision competition?
- 49531 9y agoYea, I don't know that it does really. If anything making it more of a utility entrenches existing players. That being said I think that net neutrality promotes competition on the internet as a whole, which I think is more impactful and positive, but in this line of thinking is probably a little besides the point. I don't really think ending net neutrality promotes competition between broadband providers either. I think either way you have entrenched natural oligopolies, just with NN they're not getting in the way of a free and open internet.
- iratewizard 9y agoDoes it do that on the wider internet? The most notable companies supporting it are companies that have already sliced up 98% of the internet market and actively engage in anti-consumer monopolization.
- pzxc 9y agoOf course it does. Just because they already have the advantage doesn't mean we should forfeit the game. (That's a metaphor, this is actually much more serious than a game) Comcast already refused to make infrastructure upgrades so that customers (who were paying Comcast) could get the services they wanted (Netflix). If net neutrality protections are removed, they could just throttle them out of existence. I, as a one man web dev shop, run about 20 or so websites. Some are info sites, some are SaaS, some are just hobbies. Comcast won't throttle traffic to me because they don't care about someone as small as me -- but if Comcast and all the other ISPs start offering "fast lane service" for cheaper prices that give prime service to big places like Facebook/etc (who can afford to pay the ISPs kickbacks), and degraded or "normal" service to everyone else (me), then I am harmed just the same.
- matt4077 9y agoThe regulatory process requires agencies to make a reasonable effort to explain their decisions and to consider all stakeholders and relevant counter-arguments. This is codified in the Administrative Procedure Act. Ultimately, the most relevant flaw in the FCC’s decision may come down to the following: Broadband has to be defined as either an information service or telecommunications service. The first is “the offering of a capability for generating, acquiring, storing, transforming, processing, retrieving, utilizing, or making available information,” while the second is “the transmission, between or among points specified by the user, of information of the user’s choosing, without change in the form or content of the information as sent and received.” I’ll let you take a guess here and just say that to repeal net neutrality, the FCC had to engage in some rather weird semantic gymnastics to arrive at the answer it wanted. That may not hold up in court.
- JumpCrisscross 9y ago> Broadband has to be defined as either an information service or telecommunications service Pardon me legal ignorance. Why this dichotomy?
- amluto 9y agoThe Telecommunications Act says so. The Act also defines both terms, and it seems quite clear that broadband service is a telecommunications service, not an information service.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- kakarot 9y agoJust when I was on the verge of leaving Firefox over UI issues.
- marcoperaza 9y agoGiven that the Supreme Court has previously upheld both of the FCC’s classifications of broadband under the Telecommunications Act of 1996, first as an “information service” and then as a “telecommunications service” (when Wheeler reclassified it to impose net neutrality), there is no way that they will strike down a return to the “information service” classification. By a legal doctrine known as “Chevron deference”, the courts defer to regulatory agencies in choosing between plausible interpretations of the law, instead of choosing an interpretation themselves. From the text of the Act, it is not clear what broadband internet service is. If a “telecommunications service”, it is subject to the very extensive Title II requirements including common carriage. So while the FCC classified it as an “information service” in the early 2000s, it reclassified it as a “telecommunications service” in 2015 in order to impose net neutrality. Both of these classifications were challenged in court and survived scrutiny. Now the FCC has gone back to the “information service” classification. There is no reason to think that the court has changed its mind on the reasonableness of either interpretation of the act, so any suits challenging this would need to allege some procedural deficiency in how the FCC promulgated the new regulation. The plaintiffs are not likely to prevail.
- rsingel 9y agoI would hesitate to say never. When the Supreme Court allowed the FCC to designate cable broadband as an info service (Title I) in 2005, the majority basically said the facts at the time make it plausible to call ISPs that way because, well, they offer email and webpages, but that even then the better interpretation was Title II. (Scalia famously said it was ridiculous to think ISPs weren't Title II). So the courts could now say that Title I doesn't fit at all because they are basically just hired pipes. Chevron deference only goes so far - an agency can't call a river an ocean, for instance. So this FCC is making as much as they can of DNS and ISP caching in its Order to argue ISPs are not just data transporters. And finally, on Chevron deference - one thing to remember: many conservatives hate it since it hands power to agencies over Congress. If this ever got to the Supreme Court, watch out for Neil Gorsuch, who will have to face the choice of party over his principle hatred of Chevron deference.
- marcoperaza 9y ago
- mlindner 9y agoThat's unfortunate. I had thought that at least Mozilla had people that understood BGP and network routing and why it's impossible for an ISP to treat all data equally and also maintain good QoS. I guess this is just them advocating for themselves as it reduces their costs.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- IntronExon 9y agoFor those of us who don’t understand, I’d love to hear your explanation of the impossibiliy you’re claiming.
- mlindner 9y agoWhat is the metric for determining what data gets through when there is more data than what the transiting connection can handle? The internet is not one single network. It's a series of interconnected network that are operated under different policies and owned by various companies. I'm assuming you have an understanding of BGP and peering. When peering is established between companies there's a general understanding that peering is free if the data flow in each direction is approximately equal. It's a mutual benefit so both engage in the peering. If however data is predominantly flowing in one direction (early Netflix for example) then companies are eating costs (Netflix's costs) to continue to provide Netflix's data to their customers. If you force ISPs to peer in these sorts of arrangements (Net Neutrality) you are shifting costs from Netflix on to the ISPs. ISPs then need to charge their customers more even if they are not customers of Netflix. This was eventually fixed historically by forcing Netflix to to pay for peering despite the large outrage at the time about Comcast "throttling Netflix" and then "forcing them to pay to stop throttling" which misrepresented what was going on. This is just one example.
- jechamt 9y agoI think that the points you make are not trivial or inconsequential. I'd be very interested to read more about the challenges that face communications companies that facilitate networks, if you'd be willing to provide references to a few items, such as: 'a general understanding that peering is free ...' - (might this be spelled out in the business service contracts between Comcast and a provider such as Netflix?) a metric for how to determine and verify by both parties how much data is predominantly flowing and in which direction And if these details to an agreement had been discussed and agreed upon by some parties that later entered a public debate about them, I might also wonder: if a metric is determined for how an ISP will route traffic, how will it identify and share how much traffic it can handle, and how much it has received? What peer relationships is Comcast, or any other ISP, also bound by of similar terms that might connect a candidate business to remote customers that the ISP does not directly service, further along on the internet? How will this also impact the ability of an individual customer or business to make decisions on the terms described above?
- amerine 9y agoThank you, Mozilla.
- chapill 9y agoI wonder who's funding Mozilla in this proxy fight? They seem to be struggling just to stay alive with their core product, Firefox. I can't see how they can justify fighting expensive legal battles on a whim to shareholders.
- petyrflytrap 9y agoMozilla is a non-profit, there are no shareholders. Firefox isn't struggling either. Both of these points lead me to believe you have no idea what you're talking about.
- staplers 9y agoAre you joking? "-- Mozilla booked $323 million in royalties in 2014, up about 7% from the year earlier."
- chapill 9y agoAre you? 2014 is the year they signed a big deal with Yahoo. Of course they did well that year.
- staplers 9y agohttps://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/annualreport/2016/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/annualreport/2016/ Better? "Mozilla’s consolidated reported revenue (Mozilla Foundation, Mozilla Corporation and all subsidiaries) for CY 2016 was $520M (US), as compared to $421M in 2015."
- chapill 9y agoYou're still missing the point. FF is free. Where is the revenue coming from? I think I found my answer on your page though, https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2017/11/14/firefox-features-google-as-default-search-provider-in-the-u-s-canada-hong-kong-and-taiwan/ https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2017/11/14/firefox-features-go... Mozilla is acting as a Google puppet. I'm sure they didn't risk breaking a 5 year deal with Yahoo for nothing.
- turc1656 9y agoAccording to Mozilla's legal filing, they are claiming it violates the Communications Act of 1934 and the Telecommunications Act of 1996 because the FCC's decision was...wait for it..."arbitrary, capricious, and an abuse of discretion". Sounds like they are basically throwing a temper tantrum and grasping at straws. Their argument essentially amounts to "We believe this ruling is so bad that it can't possibly be allowed to go through. This is a clear violation of their statutory mandate." I find arguments like this truly astounding because no one was claiming they were violating federal law before they implemented the net neutrality regulations. To me, this is eerily similar to the recent DACA ruling where the federal judge required that DACA must be kept in force for the time being while everything is being sorted out. But the reason the judge gave was pretty telling - "The question before the court is thus not whether defendants could end the DACA program, but whether they offered legally adequate reasons for doing so." That sounds pretty much exactly like the argument we are seeing here. In fact, the author of the CNN article I grabbed that judge's quote from also uses the same language about Trump's move on DACA being "arbitrary and capricious". Searching these phrases online you will find this all relates to the Administrative Procedure Act of 1946. There are two types of judicial review under this act - the arbitrary and capricious review and the substantial evidence review. Obviously, based on these filings, this would fall under the former. That does require a reasonable explanation for the decision. However, given the nature of this topic the justification is obvious - that a huge portion of the country supports the elimination of DACA. That a judge would ignore this is unconscionable. The only other option under this law is to go after the decision as a violation of the separation of powers. However, if it is ruled as such, that also means that Obama's 2012 creation of the DACA program was also a violation of the separation of powers and thus the DACA program would need to be shut down. Whether you are in favor of net neutrality or against it - in favor of DACA or not, the law needs to be the law. All of this judicial nonsense reeks of political games. And every time judges uphold stuff like this based on these ridiculous, spurious arguments, the Rule of Law continues to degrade and our nation suffers.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- civilitty 9y ago
- jakeogh 9y agoMozilla: fighting for more Internet regulation!
- azdle 9y agoYeah, it is wonderful, isn't it?
- wmeredith 9y agoWe either need more or less. If the ISP's government granted local monopolies were dissolved we wouldn't need net neutrality because the free market would do its job.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- 13years 9y ago> ISP's government granted local monopolies This really needed to be part of the public discourse. It is a component which received little attention. However, it is quite typical IMHO. Government creates a problem for itself to solve. Infinite recursion then ensues.
- philipov 9y agoIf you're in the business of selling glass, go out and break some windows.
- 49531 9y agoMeh, I like to think of it like my other utilities. They're, in a lot of cases, monopolies granted by government, but they seem to work fairly well in most places. Allowing corporations to benefit from natural monopolies without regulating them is just a bad idea.
- s73v3r_ 9y agoYup. Regulations to make things better for their, and all Internet users.
- yobb 9y agoEverybody's up in arms over the fact that the FCC reverted the Internet to the same level of governance that it operated under from its inception up until 2015. The Internet has operated just fine all these years, so why now is it such a catastrophe that so-called “net neutrality” has been overturned? I submit that these people are sheep and just braying along with the herd.
- dragonwriter 9y ago> Everybody's up in arms over the fact that the FCC reverted the Internet to the same level of governance that it operated under from its inception up until 2015. No, this is simply factually false. The FCC has enforced neutrality since adopting the Open Internet policy statement in 2005, through a series of different mechanisms (the ones prior to the 2015 Title II approach cannot be reverted to because they have since been foreclosed by the federal courts, who, in the most recent case, specifically pointed to Title II classification as the legally-viable basis for the kind of rules that had been adopted under the prior Title I regime.) (And, IIRC, neutrality liked principles applied to many non-dialup ISPs prior to that, not due to general policy targeting ISPs but specific rules governing the particular infrastructure by which those services were provided.)
- niij 9y ago>And, IIRC, neutrality liked principles applied to many non-dialup ISPs prior to that, not due to general policy targeting ISPs but specific rules governing the particular infrastructure by which those services were provided They apply to DSL (not sure if dial-up counts as this, although I suspect it does). But not to cable (coax lines), satellite, etc
- Proven 9y agoScrew Mozilla. Maybe they should focus more on fixing their browser and less on asking the State to do their bidding.
- TriStarGod 9y agoJust donated to Mozilla. Even if Mozilla wins, Trump's FCC may not enforce it. Its just like how ACA is being enforced in Illinois. Blue Cross is illegally selling insufficient health insurance.