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Feds move to block California’s net neutrality law
- heimatau 6y agoHopefully this won't go far. Federal law is supposed to be a minimum and States can go more restrictive (i.e. regulation through NN).
- dfxm12 6y agoPerhaps in theory, however, this administration has constantly given itself more and more power while the president's party mates in congress stood by and did nothing to check it. Yes, very recently, SCOTUS has checked the president's power a bit, but tying this stuff up in Federal Courts is, at best, a waste of tax payer money. Luckily, elections are coming up in November.
- swsieber 6y agoNo matter who wins, I expect presidential powers to continue to expand. Trump does it with more flair, but Obama also did it.
- mlthoughts2018 6y agoIt’s a total difference of kind with Trump. I agree with you this keeps increasing over time, but Trump’s abuse of power is categorically unlike any president in almost a hundred years. The most recent comparable thing to me is probably FDR’s executive order for Japanese internment camps. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_9066 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_9066
- bregma 6y agoObama did it with more flair. Trump does it with more bluster. GW Bush did it with more stumbling. Clinton did it with interns [0]. Fact is it's a monotonic increasing function you can trace back as far as Roosevelt, maybe even Lincoln. [0] This may have veered off-topic.
- minerjoe 6y agoNot sure why this is dead? I found it rather true.
- chipotle_coyote 6y ago"Presidents generally support expanding executive powers" is true, but that doesn't mean that all presidents pushed to expand powers in the same way and to the same degree. "Obama did it with more flair, Bush did it with more stumbling" reduces these differences to mere aesthetics. More generally, "both sides are bad" is essentially the cynic's version of "both sides are valid," and should be treated with a similarly skeptical eye. False equivalence that gets you to nod your head in agreement is still false equivalence.
- kevin_thibedeau 6y agoObama was stuck with a Congress that wouldn't do its job because it was obsessed with sabotaging everything.
- jfengel 6y agoAnd so with Biden, should he win. Even a wave election won't produce a filibuster-proof majority. And as with Obama, they will filibuster every attempt at legislation, so that they can cite it as proof that the Congress doesn't work so elect them.
- mikeyouse 6y agoIt's becoming pretty clear they're going to get rid of the filibuster if the Democrats take the Senate - probably rightly so.
- jfengel 6y agoAt one time I might have defended the practice, since some things are important enough that they should require supermajorities. But there's already a high bar to clear, in that legislation has to pass the House and the Senate and the President. That alone guarantees gridlock more often than not. So I won't be sad to see it go. It's already gone in the one case I felt it was appropriate, for lifetime nominations to the Supreme Court, an enormous amount of power that doesn't require the input of the House.
- toast0 6y agoCongress's job is to sabotage everything. It's called checks and balances. Both parties since time forever have been expanding presidential powers because convincing congress to do things is hard, but convincing congress to undo things is hard. If you're going to chastize Presidents for using executive actions for things that should probably be done by Congress, you should really chastize all of them. Otherwise, you're really just chastizing Presidents for taking actions that you don't like, but blaming the process instead of the actions.
- tmaly 6y agohas there every been any major rulings on the 10th amendment? I think this should be the issue here.
- voxic11 6y agoYeah there was a recent one which nullified the federal ban on sportsbetting because the federal government didn't directly ban sportsbetting, instead it banned the states from enacting any new laws which legalized sportsbetting. The reasoning was that the federal government may be able to enact and enforce laws on sportsbetting, but it cannot force the state governments to continue to enforce their laws on sportsbetting if their legislatures want to stop. https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/17pdf/16-476_dbfi.pdf https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/17pdf/16-476_dbfi.pdf
- jcranmer 6y agoThe Tenth Amendment doesn't mean what most of these arguments would have it mean. The disputes center on the limits of federal power, and here the Tenth Amendment merely tautologically says that the federal government doesn't have any power it doesn't have. Because of the Supremacy Clause, the states don't have any power to overrule the federal government, so the rest of it doesn't really apply. It should be noted that the original version of the text said "The powers not expressly delegated", but this version of text failed to pass Congress. It was only after deleting that word that the amendment passed. That one word change is key, since including that word would mean what people in these arguments want it to mean, so its intentional omission destroys those arguments.
- tmaly 6y agomaybe we need to put that word back in.
- lersrvwtogether 6y agoWheeler passed net neutrality: No Blocking, No Throttling, No Paid Prioritization (after FCC decided that ISPs are common carriers and thus FCC then had statutory authority). Pai's (former Verizon lobbyist) FCC then decided that ISPs are not common carriers and repeatedly argued that FCC thus now has no authority to regulate ISPs in regards to Net Neutrality. To now claim that the federal government has statutory authority which supersedes state Net Neutrality laws (without classing ISPs as common carriers) is incredibly inconsistent with the previously argued position. Here's to hoping that the winds change and we're able to resolve the patchwork of state Net Neutrality provisions (that we have due to declassifying ISPs as common carriers) next year.
- henriquez 6y agoTo drastically oversimplify, the FCC's position is: 1. we refuse to regulate ISPs, 2. nobody else can either A look at other regulatory law, such as California's CARB and more stringent emissions standards than federal would seem to make Pai's position an uphill battle for the FCC. By refusing to do his job and by revoking the Title II regs (in an arbitrary and capricious fashion, no less), Pai has opened the door to a much more complicated scenario where ISPs are at the mercy of state regulators and their compliance costs just got 50x more complicated. Obviously the lobbyists don't like that, but everyone involved has been behaving in an extremely short-sighted fashion.
- lersrvwtogether 6y agoWhere is the power to regulate intrastate ISP commerce granted to the federal government? Certainly not in the US Constitution. What a slippery slope.
- fuzzer37 6y agoWell there's the interstate commerce clause, not sure why them being an ISP changes anything.
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- jcranmer 6y agoIn order to block state regulation, federal law either has to establish regulations, or pretty explicitly state that it intends to have deregulation nullify state law. The FCC deregulation was effected by arguing that broadband services aren't in its remit for regulation, which makes it hard for the FCC to win an argument that it can overrule state regulations on the basis of its own inability to regulate them. This seems pretty much a slam-dunk for "it's not going to work" as far as the courts go, not that it stops people from trying.
- coldpie 6y ago> not that it stops people from trying Honestly this is the part I find most galling. My (and your) ISP is using the money I pay to them to fight a stupid, probably-losing lawsuit whose sole purpose is to injure me as a consumer. I'm paying to hurt myself, and I have no choice, because every ISP is fighting this battle.
- jcranmer 6y agoIt's not the ISP who's fighting the lawsuit, it's the FCC. So your glorious tax money is funding this. I don't know if that should make you feel better or worse.
- coldpie 6y agoI admit I'm not great at legal stuff, but the article I read stated the broadband industry is involved: "The Trump administration and broadband industry are resuming their fight against California's net neutrality law, with the US Department of Justice and ISP lobby groups filing new complaints against the state yesterday." "Now that the Trump administration and broadband industry have filed amended complaints..." "The broadband industry's amended complaint was filed by the major lobby groups representing cable, fiber, DSL, and mobile Internet providers." https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/08/trump-admin-and-isps-restart-lawsuit-against-california-net-neutrality-law/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/08/trump-admin-and-... Here is the complaint itself, with plaintiffs "AMERICAN CABLE ASSOCIATION, CTIA – THE WIRELESS ASSOCIATION, NCTA – THE INTERNET & TELEVISION ASSOCIATION, and USTELECOM – THE BROADBAND ASSOCIATION, on behalf of their members": https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.caed.344150/gov.uscourts.caed.344150.52.0.pdf https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.caed.344150... If I'm reading this right, the FCC filed a separate complaint. So you're right: I (and you) am paying to hurt myself, twice! Awesome.
- devwastaken 6y agoIt's interstate commerce, feds have a lot of power when it comes to anything that crosses state lines. Even if it's indirect. By employing net neutrality law in Cali, they affect the transmission of data in and out of Cali, therefore being interstate. Perhaps it's somehow special here, but that's my understanding of anything and everything that crosses state lines.
- ivalm 6y agoBut feds argument was that they are not empowered to regulate ISPs. So effectively there is no regulation either way on Fed level and so the state isn’t going against anything.
- anonunivgrad 6y agoThat’s not true. That is folk constitutional law. It might be descriptive of some areas of law as they currently operate, but that is not the constitutional federalism framework in the US. When the federal government acts in the areas where it has authority, its enumerated powers[1], then it can and often does preempt state law. Sometimes the preemption is explicitly in the law, but other times it is implicit and up to a court to determine whether a particular state action or kind of state action would undermine the federal regulatory scheme. If it is the policy of the US government that there is no guarantee of transit on the Internet, then there is a good argument that state regulations to the contrary undermine the federal scheme, which is to have a free market for transit. [1] the expansive reading of those enumerated powers is another question altogether
- dfxm12 6y agoNot surprised this big-government right wing administration is stomping over states' rights. It looks like the road to a more free Internet begins in November.
- pmiller2 6y agoRe: "big-government right wing administration," I have always found it amusing that people tend to tag the Democrats with the whole "big government" attribute. Last I checked, the only major new federal agencies that have been created in the past 50 years (EPA, DoED, DHS) came into existence under Republican administrations: * EPA: Proposed, authorized, and implemented under Nixon. * DoEd: Authorized under Carter, implemented under Reagan... and we all know that if you implement it, it's your responsibility (/s by way of comparison with code). * DHS: Authorized and implemented by GWB in response to 9/11. I guess you could also count the Space Force (Trump) in here. Am I missing any created by Democratic presidents? This is all off the top of my head.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- jdkfkror 6y agoNet neutrality needs to go. Why should I, as a private ISP company, be forced to pass through racist content, russian disinformation or anti vaxxer propaganda? If YouTube is allowed to block content, why aren't ISP's also allowed? We need to call out companies who tollerate hate speech. You can always start your own ISP if you fancy those kinds of content.
- lykr0n 6y agoYou can't just go out and start an ISP. That's like saying I can go out and start my own bank or make my own payment processor.
- failrate 6y agoIt is difficult to start your own ISP or payment processor, but it is possible.
- borski 6y agoI agree with your sentiment (that you shouldn't have to), but you actually can do these things. People have started banks and payment processors, and competed successfully with the bigger ones; Stripe is a great example, as is Simple. https://startyourownisp.com https://startyourownisp.com
- RangerScience 6y agoAFAIK Simple is not a bank, it's a (better) UI/UX wrapper around "bank", and they've changed the underlying provider at least once since I've been using them.
- borski 6y agoFair, but nevertheless: https://www.americanbanker.com/list/new-banks-this-year https://www.americanbanker.com/list/new-banks-this-year
- betterunix2 6y ago
- shmerl 6y agoFirst they moved to strip FCC of its ability to preempt state regulations, and now they want to sit on two chairs and regulate states? Too bad, they should have thought about it when their corrupt monopolistic overlords paid them to repeal federal net neutrality. States should fight back against this foolery.
- wtracy 6y agoWho wants to bankroll me if I go create a rural ISP somewhere (probably Nevada/Utah/Arizona, where regulation is lax), become a local hero for providing broadband communication where the incumbents won't, then throttle/censor Fox/Breitbart (maybe requiring a "premium subscription" for access) and tell everyone who complains, "Hey, it's legal!" Think maybe we could actually get the Republicans on board with net neutrality?
- kitteh 6y agoThe problem is that the laws in some places will make it hard for you to become the ISP in some of those spots due to the incumbents. There are folks on the left who aren't on board with net neutrality. I'd say the common ground between left and right is about having viable competition, which we don't have. But we kinda tried that with the 1996 telecom act and that failed. I'd rather municipalities get in the broadband access game as a utility and be transparent about costs and utilization and provide interconnection to an ISP upstream at standard tariffed rates.
- supernova87a 6y agoYou might enjoy listening to this podcast episode, on a town that tried to do exactly that: https://www.npr.org/2020/05/29/865908114/small-america-vs-big-internet https://www.npr.org/2020/05/29/865908114/small-america-vs-bi...
- pas 6y agotl;dr: The North Carolina legislature passed a law in 2011 prohibiting municipal telecommunication services, but the city of Wilson was able to carve out an exemption, because Greenlight (owned by Wilson) was already providing such services. Then the FCC tried to intervene, but Federal courts, on appeal it found that the 1996 Telecommunications Act is not giving this specific power to the FCC. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenlight_(Internet_service) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenlight_(Internet_service)
- wool_gather 6y agoA similar play in Tennessee: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/03/tennessee-kills-muni-broadband-expansion-bill-after-att-opposition/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/03/tennessee-kills-... Attempts to expand broadband service run by municipalities forcefully opposed by AT&T and Comcast.
- supernova87a 6y agoSigh, these federal-state-local legal fights over single issues are so exhausting to see, because they really point to no single coherent strategy across our country. For so many issues. Topic A -- certain state governors don't want to be mandated to do something they don't like that's gaining popular support, and so declare / pass laws that prevent localities from passing their own mandates (any current topic you can think of?) Topic B -- same or other state governors don't want to have federally mandated rules on another topic, so go against the principle they just used for their own localities, and say that they cannot be mandated to follow something they disagree with. Topic C -- yet another topic comes up where governors want everyone to follow a certain guideline and not deviate, and insist that every locality does follow top-down legislation, and get upset at other states that don't follow the rule. Topic D -- "states should have the right to try their own solutions" and not be imposed upon by peanut-butter inappropriate federal solutions on things they disagree with. Topic E -- "states should follow rules given from the federal government" on things they do agree with. I'm sometimes exhausted by this patchwork. And principles that flap in the wind.
- zozin 6y agoThat's the whole point of federalism/separation of powers. Our government is not supposed to be efficient. This fact might not always make sense to those obsessed with efficiency, such as as programmers, but in this case it's a feature, not a bug. Disputes between states and the federal government take years/decades to be resolved, but I'd rather have our inefficient system over a more efficient one that is far more prone to being taken over by demagogues and those who seek ultimate power.
- tarboreus 6y agoThis is highly accurate. Our inefficiency and the fact that we're not a democracy, or a republic, but really a bureaucracy might just get us through November.
- supernova87a 6y agoI understand that aspect of it, and am all in favor. Sometimes the greatest benefit of our system is that it helps us avoid great folly and disaster, rather than enabling great sudden advances. What I can't stand is the principled, yet then flip-flop-on-principles, stands people take per issue, only to have it switch with the next issue. It's paralyzing us on important, urgent things that aren't decade-long debates that should be had.
- dependenttypes 6y agoDoes net neutrality make it illegal to throttle ssh/bittorrent traffic?
- abvdasker 6y agoIt seems absurd that the DOJ is using the FCC's argument that it didn't have the authority to regulate ISPs to prevent states from regulating ISPs. If they don't have the authority to regulate, how do they have the authority to stop regulation? I think the answer is pretty obviously not some kind of reasonable legal argument, but simply that the corporations which really run the Trump FCC and DOJ do not want Net Neutrality regulations. Comcast's bottom line doesn't care about rational legal arguments.
- Florin_Andrei 6y agoThe moneybags needs to stop meddling in policy. The only reason why they ever meddle is to increase their own heft.
- renewiltord 6y agoDang, guess we don't really have a non-big-government states-rights party any more. BTW I'm still mad about Newsom screwing about with his no-IRV-in-California decree. Not okay, Gavin. Not okay. Leave the decision making to the people unless something gets ugly.
- lwf 6y agoIRV == "instant runoff voting"?
- renewiltord 6y agoYes, sir. Only the grandfathered dudes (SF, Oakland, Berkeley, San Leandro, Palm Desert) get to keep theirs. https://www.gov.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/SB-212-Veto-Message.pdf https://www.gov.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/SB-212-Vet... Sorry to take this off-topic. I'll stop here. The connection was that I don't generally like the bigger admin divisions stopping the smaller admin divisions from doing things like this.
- imeanth00 6y agoThe GOP was repeating “states rights” to seed the airwaves with propaganda. They’ve targeted blue states with federal policy over and over, manipulate all state markets giving free money to their cronies to prop up dynastic wealth, and have a history of creeping SCOTUS rulings thanks to partisan hack justices. The only difference between GW and Trump is GW kept his mouth shut. Politically their Machiavellian ways predate Trump. The people have decided they’re not interested in paying attention to politics and tolerate the political chicanery their ennui enables. Free market of emotional minds to troll into consent, cause really what else you gonna do? Bailing on ones culture is not trivial.