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I've always felt the FCC was an inappropriate path for enforcing this. Ideally it would be powers granted to the FTC either through legislation or potentially t

by yesco 2y ago

I've always felt the FCC was an inappropriate path for enforcing this. Ideally it would be powers granted to the FTC either through legislation or potentially through existing powers they might already have in this domain. The FCC's jurisdiction on this was already shaky even before Chevron was overturned, I think the moment activism was pushed in this direction net neutrality was doomed a decade of unending lawsuits. Even if they somehow made it passed the courts, I'm not quite convinced the FCC would be motivated to actually do much about this even with a sympathetic administration. Consider that prior to the internet, they were pretty much created to do the opposite of what people want from net neutrality. These are just my armchair thoughts though.

fooey 2y ago
The fun tradeoff here is since the courts determined the feds can't regulate it, the states are allowed to instead, with California and New York already taking the lead, and are much more consumer oriented than anything that could be done federally.
- granzymes 2y ago
  The Federal government can regulate broadband providers, just not as telecommunications providers (subject to common carrier requirements) under the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Congress could update the law if it wanted to. If the court had held otherwise, the Federal common carrier requirements would have preempted any common carrier duties imposed by California and New York. Since today the 6th Circuit says the FCC does not have that power (because broadband providers offer information services and not telecommunications services), California and New York are welcome to impose those duties within their state boundaries (as long as they don't step on any other areas of Federal preemption).
  - vel0city 2y ago
    > because broadband providers offer information services and not telecommunications services This is where I highly disagree with the opinions of this court decision. My ISP is absolutely providing me telecommunications services, not information service. For practically all the "information" I receive, my ISP is not "generating, acquiring, storing, transforming, processing, retrieving, utilizing, or making available information via telecommunications". That maybe sometimes I might land on some webpage hosted by my ISP is inconsequential to the services I am paying for, that's not the service I'm paying for. In the end I'm paying for them to give me the ability to telecommunicate with a server hosted by someone else which then generates, processes, retrives, that information. My ISP is not the information service which lets me post here. Hacker News is an information service acquiring, storing, transforming, processing, and retrieving the data I request. My ISP is only used for me to talk to the Hacker News webserver. https://www.congress.gov/104/plaws/publ104/PLAW-104publ104.pdf https://www.congress.gov/104/plaws/publ104/PLAW-104publ104.p... I truly don't understand how anyone who can even vaguely understand how ISPs work and reads this law could say ISPs aren't telecommunications providers and are instead information service providers. Other than maybe big bags of cash that makes people's reading comprehension a little loose.
    - granzymes 2y ago
      >We now turn to the merits, which the parties have argued here in exemplary fashion. But the key flaw in the FCC’s arguments throughout is that the FCC elides the phrase “offering of a capability” as used in § 153(24). That phrase makes plain that a provider need not itself generate, process, retrieve, or otherwise manipulate information in order to provide an “information service” as defined in § 153(24). Instead, a provider need only offer the “capability” of manipulating information (in the ways recited in that subsection) to offer an “information service” under § 153(24). Even under the FCC’s narrower interpretation of “capability,” Broadband Internet Access Providers allow users, at minimum, to “retrieve information stored elsewhere. And we think it equally plain, for the reasons recited below, that Broadband Internet Service Providers offer at least that capability.
      - tptacek 2y ago
        As I said elsewhere on this thread, I read this as the court saying that something to the effect of "the underlying links that comprise the Internet backbone are probably telecommunications, but the provision of global Internet service on top of them constitutes information services". Which sounds crazy in 2024, but I'm not sure that's a crazy reading of the world circa 1996, which is the interpretation that controls here --- the Telecommunication Act appears to refer to the Internet primarily as something that runs on top of telecommunication links.
        wtallis 2y ago
        > the Telecommunication Act appears to refer to the Internet primarily as something that runs on top of telecommunication links. It most certainly does; the statutory definition is that there can be no information service without an underlying telecommunication service. So how could any court rule that ISPs who own the wires coming into my house are providing purely an information service and no part of their business can be regulated as a telecommunication service?
        tptacek 2y ago
- overstay8930 2y ago
  Which is exactly how it’s supposed to work in the first place, individual states are really the only entities that even have the power to enforce any sort of regulation here anyways. Telecom was always handled by states, the feds only stepped in when it was inter-state. This was going to happen regardless, T-Mobile basically threw throttling in their face and they had no choice but to pretend it was fine, and they’ll be doing the same with home internet soon enough (followed by CableCos in non-competitive areas).
  - Terr_ 2y ago
    > Which is exactly how it’s supposed to work in the first place True, but that was also when riding on a horse was the fastest way over land and a much much greater proportion of stuff was within state-lines. In some alternate universe where the telegraph had already been invented, all those states may have entered into some sort of special telegram compact, and our "how it's supposed to work in the first place" would be rather different. Actually, in this universe something similar did happen: The federal government was explicitly authorized to run a nationwide postal service, which stands out in a Constitution that was otherwise mostly about what it couldn't do.
  - scarface_74 2y ago
    Net neutrality was never about mobile data. Unlike terrestrial internet, you can’t just build more capacity with over the air data transmissions. You have to have more agressive network and QOS management for cellular networks. Besides that, the true argument for net neutrality was not to unfairly help or hurt businesses. T-mobile 0 rated all of the streaming services that participated in the program and were not asking for money for it. Even though they didn’t advertise it, if you dug deep enough, you could find the list including some porn sites. Someone commented on HN a while back that they were able to get their 50 stream non profit 0 rated.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
  - johnnyanmac 2y ago
datadrivenangel 2y ago
FTC would make more sense, and now that this is getting devolved to the states I expect we'll see the major telecoms lobbying for regulation so that they don't have the hassle of implementing differing policies by state and the likely painful regulations that they'll get in more progressive states.
- rockskon 2y ago
  What exactly is the FTC going to do with Net Neutrality? In what way is what the FCC was trying to accomplish within the ability of the FTC to enact instead?
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
timewizard 2y ago
> Consider that prior to the internet, they were pretty much created to do the opposite of what people want from net neutrality. You can scale broadband almost infinitely. You _cannot_ scale phone service or television or radio the same way. There are simple limits on physical space and on carrier allocations that require there to be a licensing body. The FCC is required to be reasonable and non-discriminatory and broadcasters are required to serve their local communities directly. The FCC can only license broadcasters and can place no limits on receivers at all. This is because these airwaves collectively belong to the people. It was created to serve these purposes. None of these are the "opposite" of net neutrality in any way whatsoever.
- yesco 2y ago
  Just my 2 cents, but I don't really see how your first paragraph proves the assertion you make in the second... Arguments about Netflix using too much bandwidth on an ISPs network are exactly the kind of thing I'd expect FCC personnel to be sympathetic with considering it's the same argument they use for all the other mediums they cover... It ultimately devolves all discussions into crappy metaphors involving phone and radio when the Internet is really it's own thing and should be treated as such. Meanwhile the FTC handles consumer protection, they are by nature going to be more proactive about this kind of thing. If they handle it then it aligns with their existing incentive structures and they can brag about it to congress in the same way they do for everything else they do when budgeting discussions come up. No matter how I think about it, the FCC just seems incompatible with what most net neutrality advocates, such as myself, actually desire.
  - gary_0 2y ago
    You're both right: - The FCC's founding mission is to safeguard telecommunications mediums as a commons, to the benefit of the public -- a good fit for the Internet. - The FCC is functionally a bureaucracy that grants licenses to discrete chunks of very scarce communications resources -- a bad fit for the Internet. Either way, some agency needs to be put forward as a candidate for preventing monopolistic corporations from abusing the public Internet.
Drunk_Engineer 2y ago
Mobile broadband uses public airwaves, which is entirely FCC jurisdiction.
bearjaws 2y ago
Ah the ole "Why did this government agency create this rule? It should be done by congress!" Congress has been disfunctional for 30 years. This is the result of that. It's like a weird "acktually" form of libertarianism, sure the most correct way to implement it is with congress, but in lieu of that what should the government do? Nothing?
- armada651 2y ago
  Government agencies have been picking up the slack for a dysfunctional congress. Now that that power has been taken away the inability of congress to pass consumer protection laws will be on full display.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - johnnyanmac 2y ago
    And probably met with apathy, as always. They won't realize ISPs are giving traffic to the highest bidder. They will just complain about [non-market leader] being slow to load, and move to [market leader] because "it's faster". All according to the plan of the real rulers of this plutocracy.
  - xp84 2y ago
    That's a hopeful thought. I really hope people will start to realize that what they're doing now - sending jackasses to Congress with a mandate to never compromise and to do whatever is necessary to absolutely destroy (insert opposite party) at all costs - is not compatible with a functioning government, and just as importantly, that having a functioning government would be a good thing.
  - sieabahlpark 2y ago
    [dead]
  - blasphemers 2y ago
    This is pretty much a trend across our entire government. Our elected officials legislate their responsibilities away so they don't need to make actual decisions that could harm them politically.
johnnyanmac 2y ago
>through legislation or potentially through existing powers well yes. The obvious think everyone knows but no one says out loud is that congress has been in a deadlock for 15 years now or so. which is a small part of why newer presidents are much more liberal in making executive orders, and why agencies (especially ones moderating tech) have had to take charge to get anything done. This story here is just another episode of the aftereffect from overturning Chevron, which will simply further stagnate any chances for change.
shmerl 2y ago
> FTC either through legislation or potentially through existing powers they might already have in this domain. Yeah, I always felt that ideas of net neutrality can be generalized by properly applying competition law. But the latter became so toothless, that it's not applied in practice. That's why all these kind of secondary efforts pop up, since FTC is useless a lot of the time.
jrm4 2y ago
Yeah, I don't get this at all. Sure, if you follow the caselaw etc. But this requires big picture thinking. The internet is like the telephone is like the radio is like TV. Ergo. THE FCC MAKES THE RULES. Don't overthink it.
- ConspiracyFact 2y ago
  Is this sarcasm? Spectrum is a finite resource.
belorn 2y ago
The domain of FCC, as it is written in the law, to create "rapid, efficient, nationwide, and world-wide wire and radio communication services with adequate facilities at reasonable charges". It seems fairly consistent that FCC could enforce net neutrality on powers they already have in their domain, without Chevron. The issue as given in this verdict is that the courts did not find internet service providers to be in the domain of communication services. Instead they are in the domain of information service. Giving the FTC the power to regulate this would mean to accept this definition that internet service providers are information services rather than communication services, making an ISP a digital version of a book seller. That just seems wrong. I would say that the ideal solution is to either have the supreme court redefine internet service as communication, or have the law rewritten for the same purpose.
winternett 2y ago
We simply wouldn't need as much bandwidth if storage on devices was improved on devices and we went back to a model of collecting our entertainment as data files. These files could be shipped on memory stick & SD cards. All streaming is being pushed so much for is the ability to rent data access (access that can be removed once monthly payments stop), and streaming is dramatically wasteful in terms of bandwidth & power resources... If Spotify, NetFlix, & Apple music are prioritized over streaming services by other companies, it's only gouging to drive consumers to downloadable file culture again, namely resources like torrenting. Big business will eventually need to abandon this old "market domination" model because of consumer demand to own physical files if things work correctly. Millions of people streaming the same movies and music over and over again is very wasteful and not sustainable in the long run, as each monthly service is a different (continually increasing) bill, it will only serve to bring bootlegging operations back to popularity in the long run... As once you download & save a digital file, it doesn't really require that bandwidth again & again per device. Subverting Net Neutrality is just another way companies will exert greed on consumers, but in the long run, consumers will always win when they withdraw from subscriptions and these companies begin to falter. We should be paying $25 a month for Internet service by now, and $2 to permanently buy a movie, and perhaps $4 to buy an album on memory stick. That would be the fair future... Instead, they're charging each user $24 a month just for (very limited selection) Netflix alone, and each other service is doing the same... Companies stand to lose everything in this battle because of the huge infrastructure (up-front) investments they need to make in order to operate... Customers can go back to pirating Mp3s, Mp4s, CDs, DVDs, Vinyl, and even Tape decks if need be. It's long overdue for the industry to check itself and do a reset... Bandwidth is not the real battle going on here, it's all economic.
- sgjohnson 2y ago
  > If Spotify, NetFlix, & Apple music are prioritized over streaming services by other companies There’s a good reason why this is the case. All the major ISPs essentially worldwide have caching servers for all the major streaming service providers. Those servers sit directly at some PoP for the ISP. This effectively removes the need for transit. Which is a win/win, for both, the ISP, and the streaming service. IP transit at scale is not cheap. Essentially what I’m saying is that it costs your ISP nothing to provide you with Netflix content, but it might be significantly more expensive to provide Disney+, for example.

by yesco 2y ago

fooey 2y ago

The fun tradeoff here is since the courts determined the feds can't regulate it, the states are allowed to instead, with California and New York already taking the lead, and are much more consumer oriented than anything that could be done federally.

granzymes 2y ago
The Federal government can regulate broadband providers, just not as telecommunications providers (subject to common carrier requirements) under the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Congress could update the law if it wanted to. If the court had held otherwise, the Federal common carrier requirements would have preempted any common carrier duties imposed by California and New York. Since today the 6th Circuit says the FCC does not have that power (because broadband providers offer information services and not telecommunications services), California and New York are welcome to impose those duties within their state boundaries (as long as they don't step on any other areas of Federal preemption).
- vel0city 2y ago
  > because broadband providers offer information services and not telecommunications services This is where I highly disagree with the opinions of this court decision. My ISP is absolutely providing me telecommunications services, not information service. For practically all the "information" I receive, my ISP is not "generating, acquiring, storing, transforming, processing, retrieving, utilizing, or making available information via telecommunications". That maybe sometimes I might land on some webpage hosted by my ISP is inconsequential to the services I am paying for, that's not the service I'm paying for. In the end I'm paying for them to give me the ability to telecommunicate with a server hosted by someone else which then generates, processes, retrives, that information. My ISP is not the information service which lets me post here. Hacker News is an information service acquiring, storing, transforming, processing, and retrieving the data I request. My ISP is only used for me to talk to the Hacker News webserver. https://www.congress.gov/104/plaws/publ104/PLAW-104publ104.pdf https://www.congress.gov/104/plaws/publ104/PLAW-104publ104.p... I truly don't understand how anyone who can even vaguely understand how ISPs work and reads this law could say ISPs aren't telecommunications providers and are instead information service providers. Other than maybe big bags of cash that makes people's reading comprehension a little loose.
  - granzymes 2y ago
    >We now turn to the merits, which the parties have argued here in exemplary fashion. But the key flaw in the FCC’s arguments throughout is that the FCC elides the phrase “offering of a capability” as used in § 153(24). That phrase makes plain that a provider need not itself generate, process, retrieve, or otherwise manipulate information in order to provide an “information service” as defined in § 153(24). Instead, a provider need only offer the “capability” of manipulating information (in the ways recited in that subsection) to offer an “information service” under § 153(24). Even under the FCC’s narrower interpretation of “capability,” Broadband Internet Access Providers allow users, at minimum, to “retrieve information stored elsewhere. And we think it equally plain, for the reasons recited below, that Broadband Internet Service Providers offer at least that capability.
    - tptacek 2y ago
      As I said elsewhere on this thread, I read this as the court saying that something to the effect of "the underlying links that comprise the Internet backbone are probably telecommunications, but the provision of global Internet service on top of them constitutes information services". Which sounds crazy in 2024, but I'm not sure that's a crazy reading of the world circa 1996, which is the interpretation that controls here --- the Telecommunication Act appears to refer to the Internet primarily as something that runs on top of telecommunication links.
      - wtallis 2y ago
        > the Telecommunication Act appears to refer to the Internet primarily as something that runs on top of telecommunication links. It most certainly does; the statutory definition is that there can be no information service without an underlying telecommunication service. So how could any court rule that ISPs who own the wires coming into my house are providing purely an information service and no part of their business can be regulated as a telecommunication service?
        tptacek 2y ago
overstay8930 2y ago
Which is exactly how it’s supposed to work in the first place, individual states are really the only entities that even have the power to enforce any sort of regulation here anyways. Telecom was always handled by states, the feds only stepped in when it was inter-state. This was going to happen regardless, T-Mobile basically threw throttling in their face and they had no choice but to pretend it was fine, and they’ll be doing the same with home internet soon enough (followed by CableCos in non-competitive areas).
- Terr_ 2y ago
  > Which is exactly how it’s supposed to work in the first place True, but that was also when riding on a horse was the fastest way over land and a much much greater proportion of stuff was within state-lines. In some alternate universe where the telegraph had already been invented, all those states may have entered into some sort of special telegram compact, and our "how it's supposed to work in the first place" would be rather different. Actually, in this universe something similar did happen: The federal government was explicitly authorized to run a nationwide postal service, which stands out in a Constitution that was otherwise mostly about what it couldn't do.
- scarface_74 2y ago
  Net neutrality was never about mobile data. Unlike terrestrial internet, you can’t just build more capacity with over the air data transmissions. You have to have more agressive network and QOS management for cellular networks. Besides that, the true argument for net neutrality was not to unfairly help or hurt businesses. T-mobile 0 rated all of the streaming services that participated in the program and were not asking for money for it. Even though they didn’t advertise it, if you dug deep enough, you could find the list including some porn sites. Someone commented on HN a while back that they were able to get their 50 stream non profit 0 rated.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- johnnyanmac 2y ago

datadrivenangel 2y ago

FTC would make more sense, and now that this is getting devolved to the states I expect we'll see the major telecoms lobbying for regulation so that they don't have the hassle of implementing differing policies by state and the likely painful regulations that they'll get in more progressive states.

rockskon 2y ago
What exactly is the FTC going to do with Net Neutrality? In what way is what the FCC was trying to accomplish within the ability of the FTC to enact instead?
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]

timewizard 2y ago

> Consider that prior to the internet, they were pretty much created to do the opposite of what people want from net neutrality. You can scale broadband almost infinitely. You _cannot_ scale phone service or television or radio the same way. There are simple limits on physical space and on carrier allocations that require there to be a licensing body. The FCC is required to be reasonable and non-discriminatory and broadcasters are required to serve their local communities directly. The FCC can only license broadcasters and can place no limits on receivers at all. This is because these airwaves collectively belong to the people. It was created to serve these purposes. None of these are the "opposite" of net neutrality in any way whatsoever.

yesco 2y ago
Just my 2 cents, but I don't really see how your first paragraph proves the assertion you make in the second... Arguments about Netflix using too much bandwidth on an ISPs network are exactly the kind of thing I'd expect FCC personnel to be sympathetic with considering it's the same argument they use for all the other mediums they cover... It ultimately devolves all discussions into crappy metaphors involving phone and radio when the Internet is really it's own thing and should be treated as such. Meanwhile the FTC handles consumer protection, they are by nature going to be more proactive about this kind of thing. If they handle it then it aligns with their existing incentive structures and they can brag about it to congress in the same way they do for everything else they do when budgeting discussions come up. No matter how I think about it, the FCC just seems incompatible with what most net neutrality advocates, such as myself, actually desire.
- gary_0 2y ago
  You're both right: - The FCC's founding mission is to safeguard telecommunications mediums as a commons, to the benefit of the public -- a good fit for the Internet. - The FCC is functionally a bureaucracy that grants licenses to discrete chunks of very scarce communications resources -- a bad fit for the Internet. Either way, some agency needs to be put forward as a candidate for preventing monopolistic corporations from abusing the public Internet.

Drunk_Engineer 2y ago

Mobile broadband uses public airwaves, which is entirely FCC jurisdiction.

bearjaws 2y ago

Ah the ole "Why did this government agency create this rule? It should be done by congress!" Congress has been disfunctional for 30 years. This is the result of that. It's like a weird "acktually" form of libertarianism, sure the most correct way to implement it is with congress, but in lieu of that what should the government do? Nothing?

armada651 2y ago
Government agencies have been picking up the slack for a dysfunctional congress. Now that that power has been taken away the inability of congress to pass consumer protection laws will be on full display.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- johnnyanmac 2y ago
  And probably met with apathy, as always. They won't realize ISPs are giving traffic to the highest bidder. They will just complain about [non-market leader] being slow to load, and move to [market leader] because "it's faster". All according to the plan of the real rulers of this plutocracy.
- xp84 2y ago
  That's a hopeful thought. I really hope people will start to realize that what they're doing now - sending jackasses to Congress with a mandate to never compromise and to do whatever is necessary to absolutely destroy (insert opposite party) at all costs - is not compatible with a functioning government, and just as importantly, that having a functioning government would be a good thing.
- sieabahlpark 2y ago
  [dead]
- blasphemers 2y ago
  This is pretty much a trend across our entire government. Our elected officials legislate their responsibilities away so they don't need to make actual decisions that could harm them politically.

johnnyanmac 2y ago

>through legislation or potentially through existing powers well yes. The obvious think everyone knows but no one says out loud is that congress has been in a deadlock for 15 years now or so. which is a small part of why newer presidents are much more liberal in making executive orders, and why agencies (especially ones moderating tech) have had to take charge to get anything done. This story here is just another episode of the aftereffect from overturning Chevron, which will simply further stagnate any chances for change.

shmerl 2y ago

> FTC either through legislation or potentially through existing powers they might already have in this domain. Yeah, I always felt that ideas of net neutrality can be generalized by properly applying competition law. But the latter became so toothless, that it's not applied in practice. That's why all these kind of secondary efforts pop up, since FTC is useless a lot of the time.

jrm4 2y ago

Yeah, I don't get this at all. Sure, if you follow the caselaw etc. But this requires big picture thinking. The internet is like the telephone is like the radio is like TV. Ergo. THE FCC MAKES THE RULES. Don't overthink it.

ConspiracyFact 2y ago
Is this sarcasm? Spectrum is a finite resource.

belorn 2y ago

The domain of FCC, as it is written in the law, to create "rapid, efficient, nationwide, and world-wide wire and radio communication services with adequate facilities at reasonable charges". It seems fairly consistent that FCC could enforce net neutrality on powers they already have in their domain, without Chevron. The issue as given in this verdict is that the courts did not find internet service providers to be in the domain of communication services. Instead they are in the domain of information service. Giving the FTC the power to regulate this would mean to accept this definition that internet service providers are information services rather than communication services, making an ISP a digital version of a book seller. That just seems wrong. I would say that the ideal solution is to either have the supreme court redefine internet service as communication, or have the law rewritten for the same purpose.

winternett 2y ago

We simply wouldn't need as much bandwidth if storage on devices was improved on devices and we went back to a model of collecting our entertainment as data files. These files could be shipped on memory stick & SD cards. All streaming is being pushed so much for is the ability to rent data access (access that can be removed once monthly payments stop), and streaming is dramatically wasteful in terms of bandwidth & power resources... If Spotify, NetFlix, & Apple music are prioritized over streaming services by other companies, it's only gouging to drive consumers to downloadable file culture again, namely resources like torrenting. Big business will eventually need to abandon this old "market domination" model because of consumer demand to own physical files if things work correctly. Millions of people streaming the same movies and music over and over again is very wasteful and not sustainable in the long run, as each monthly service is a different (continually increasing) bill, it will only serve to bring bootlegging operations back to popularity in the long run... As once you download & save a digital file, it doesn't really require that bandwidth again & again per device. Subverting Net Neutrality is just another way companies will exert greed on consumers, but in the long run, consumers will always win when they withdraw from subscriptions and these companies begin to falter. We should be paying $25 a month for Internet service by now, and $2 to permanently buy a movie, and perhaps $4 to buy an album on memory stick. That would be the fair future... Instead, they're charging each user $24 a month just for (very limited selection) Netflix alone, and each other service is doing the same... Companies stand to lose everything in this battle because of the huge infrastructure (up-front) investments they need to make in order to operate... Customers can go back to pirating Mp3s, Mp4s, CDs, DVDs, Vinyl, and even Tape decks if need be. It's long overdue for the industry to check itself and do a reset... Bandwidth is not the real battle going on here, it's all economic.

sgjohnson 2y ago
> If Spotify, NetFlix, & Apple music are prioritized over streaming services by other companies There’s a good reason why this is the case. All the major ISPs essentially worldwide have caching servers for all the major streaming service providers. Those servers sit directly at some PoP for the ISP. This effectively removes the need for transit. Which is a win/win, for both, the ISP, and the streaming service. IP transit at scale is not cheap. Essentially what I’m saying is that it costs your ISP nothing to provide you with Netflix content, but it might be significantly more expensive to provide Disney+, for example.