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Surprised this legal turn has so little discussion on HN right now. NN had felt like an evergreen hot debate topic for at least the past decade 7 years ago, 30
by danso 2y ago
Surprised this legal turn has so little discussion on HN right now. NN had felt like an evergreen hot debate topic for at least the past decade
7 years ago, 3000+ upvotes:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15924794 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15924794
- lelandfe 2y agoI just don’t think the internet has mustered awareness yet. This decision effectively killed net neutrality and dooms everything that rests on Brand X in one swoop (eg California’s own net neutrality laws).
- Xelynega 2y agoDoes this decision(or the decision it was based off of) not also basically say "the fcc has no power over broadband companies" or am I misinterpreting the "information service" vs "telecommunications service" comment?
- wtallis 2y agoMy recollection is that the FCC during the Obama years repeatedly tried to impose Net Neutrality regulations on ISPs without reclassifying them as telecommunications services, and only after exhausting that route did they try regulating them under Title II. So if this ruling stands, then there's probably enough precedent to keep the FCC from doing anything meaningful against ISPs until Congress can pass major legislation about this.
- BikiniPrince 2y agoWhat it means is abusing chevron deference to make law isn’t going to work anymore. Such sweeping changes need to be passed through Congress.
- rsingel 2y agoCalifornia's net neutrality law is in great shape. It didn't rely on Brand X. New York's broadband affordability law is in good shape too.
- lelandfe 2y agoAh, you're right. Hooray. CA's net neutrality law was challenged in court and found to be lawful due to Mozilla Corp. v. FCC, and I knew that case hinged upon Brand X. At the time, Ajit Pai was trying to prevent states from making their own net neutrality laws. Them striking down the state preemption was separate from the Brand X use, it turns out. > In neither case [Ray v. Atlantic Richfield Co and Arkansas Electric] was the source or existence of statutory authority for the agency to preempt state regulation at issue. Nor do those cases speak to a statutory scheme in which Congress expressly marked out a regulatory role for States that the federal agency has attempted to supplant. If Congress wanted Title I to vest the Commission with some form of Dormant-Commerce-Clause-like power to negate States’ statutory (and sovereign) authority just by washing its hands of its own regulatory authority, Congress could have said so p140 https://cases.justia.com/federal/appellate-courts/cadc/18-1051/18-1051-2019-10-01.pdf https://cases.justia.com/federal/appellate-courts/cadc/18-10...
- friend_Fernando 2y agoI suspect it's because of the feeling that the world has gone much further off the deep end since then. In 2017 it still felt salvageable. If the world is screwed, NN isn't as big a deal.
- mmooss 2y agoNot every NN development gets a lot of traffic. Maybe it's the day after the holidays. Maybe everyone expects the Trump administration would recind it anyway, and the conservative Supreme Court justices would undermine it. Maybe people see it as another battle in a long war.
- jmward01 2y agoI think people are exhausted from court rulings that rarely appear to be in favor of people over companies. At a certain point the belief in an impartial, consistent and fair court system is eroded to the point of breaking. Why look/care/take part if you don't believe in the system anymore?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- supernova87a 2y agoAre you saying that you believe our judicial system is fair and impartial only when it rules in your favor? I vaguely recall a similar sentiment: "the system is been rigged because I didn't win!" Courts rule on laws. If you don't like the laws, go and seek to change them. Don't cast suspicion on our judicial system, one of the reputable institutions that takes the time and effort to study facts and uphold our rights when we need them the most, because it didn't go your way on a topic of net neutrality. NN is hardly a long settled human right that you can declare it an injustice if the US turns out not to apply it in a certain way, and you're turning a ruling on whether the FCC is the proper mechanism for regulation into "the system is corrupted". Consider applying principles of government that don't shoot yourself in the foot if the other side takes power. It's one of the few things that sets us apart from less civilized countries.
- hindsightbias 2y ago[flagged]
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- paxys 2y agoThis forum, and the country as a whole, leans significantly further right today than it did 7 years ago. You'll now find way fewer people willing to openly disagree with conservative-minded rulings from the government.
- friend_Fernando 2y agoDo not confuse silence with absence. Also, that weird-looking fella in the corner with the bits and vectors sticking out is not really representative.
- dolni 2y agoThis site doesn't lean further right. It leans exactly the same way it always did. The left moved further left.
- rc_kas 2y ago10 years of very effective republican propaganda has convinced people that whatever republicans do is good
- SV_BubbleTime 2y agoI wonder how many people remember the propaganda of Google and Reddit logos loading low resolution versions slowly around peak dooming?
- floydnoel 2y agothanks for the good memory! i'd almost completely forgotten about that
- whoopdedo 2y agoBack then, Netflix was using the threat of net neutrality regulation as a bargaining chip in their fight with Comcast/Cox. Once they reached an agreement on transit fees the astroturfing stopped. Since then it's only arisen as an wedge issue for politicians to fundraise over. We won't hear about it again until the midterm elections.
- rossriley 2y agoOut of interest, from a US point of view since I'm not there, is this going to end up as a relatively damp squib in the very near future now we have access to 5G and all the competition there. Last year I was able to abandon completely my broadband provider and now have two sims, one for a home router and one for a mobile router with pretty much unlimited data. There is so much competition in the 5G mobile space that the ability of these older closed market providers over cable/fiber is surely going to be a thing of the past very soon and thus the need to enforce legal neutrality will fade?
- bregma 2y agoNet neutrality is more about backhaul and peering. None of that goes away with more competition at the subscriber level. In fact, it become far more significant.
- michaelt 2y agoAs I understand it, historically in the US many people have only had access to one broadband provider. So an American couldn't move to a different broadband provider if their current provider made Netflix slow. On the other hand, if 5G technology had such great performance and coverage that every American had a choice of 10-15 different ISPs, when one ISP slowed down Netflix they could simply change providers. That might make it less problematic for some ISPs to make Netflix slow.
- guenthert 2y agoI wouldn't count on true competition to last.
- trymas 2y agoSimilarly how it is surprising to see hundreds of too critical comments addressed at FOSS application with solo developer with 10+ years of excellent track record on another post in the same hacker news page: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42583082 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42583082
- whoitwas 2y agoWe have so much more to worry about in the US now. An African billionaire just paid over $270 million to get the guy who organized white supremacist militias to overthrow the government in 2021 elected as president. These criminal robber barons want to eliminate agencies like the FCC and any regulations like NN as well as stack the courts with people who are also robber barons, etc, etc.
- branon 2y ago“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.” — C.S. Lewis
- whoitwas 2y agoIt's beyond dangerous to allow multinational corporations to buy US elections for obvious reasons. They're not aligned with any nation and only motivated by quarterly returns. It's bad for everyone including the robber barons as the markets are captured.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- llm_trw 2y agoBig tech banned the people who cared. Now no one cares what happens to big tech. If it's Google or Verizon deciding who wins or loses the digital loterry doesn't make much difference to me after the last 10 years.
- egorfine 2y agoI was like "meh" out of a simple realization that there will never be net neutrality in the US just like there are little chances of universal healthcare, maternal support and such.
- coldpie 2y ago2024 was the successful culmination of 50 years of efforts to turn the US from a democracy into a single-party state, similar to Russia & China. That's a huge shift both for people who live here, and the entire world. Net neutrality is cool and all, but I've got bigger things to worry about.