Net neutrality bill in CA | Hacker News Reader

Net neutrality bill in CA

leginfo.legislature.ca.gov

122 pointsMrGando42 comments

I know enough Internet history to recognize that ca.gov is a United States URL. However, I'd still like to request that HN headlines disambiguate California and Canada.

Edit: As of this writing the title is "Net neutrality bill in CA". I hope the title gets changed soon enough to make my comment make no sense to most of the people who read it.

As this is a US-centric site, the abbreviation CA means California. Always has. Knowing that .gov is US only isn't necessary to disambiguate.

I've seen this attitude twice this week now, and it's unnecessarily hostile towards the 695 million English speaking internet users outside of the USA. Is it really that much of an imposition to change CA to California?

This site is somewhat Silicon-Valley centric but also Internet-centric. On the Internet, two-letter codes for places are TLDs.

Anyone here read the title and thought it was Canada?

[actual question, I'm curious to know]

I read the title and found it ambiguous.

There are a number of different efforts in the CA legislature on this issue; SB 822, linked above, amounts to a statement of intent to adopt legislation with certain features, but doesn't actually do anything (it could be intended as an outline which will be amended to do what it suggests legislation should do, though.)

A more concrete net neutrality bill is SB 460, which both defines and requires neutrality and separately requires state agencies to only contract for internet services from providers who commit, under penalty of perjury, to not violate neutrality.

http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml...

It's good to see this. Most of the time "states rights" ends up being used for something discriminatory "we reserve the right to tell women what to do with their bodies" or at best something that's just annoying "why do these laws have to be different, just to be different". In this case it is an example, that at least to me, justifies having that ability.

Most of the time "states rights" ends up being used for something discriminatory

[Citation Needed]

Personal impression mostly.

  Most of the time "states rights" ends up being used for something discriminatory

"States' rights" is a meaningless term usually applied as a misnomer for limited federal government powers. States don't have rights. People have rights. Levels of government have powers.

I really hope this trend takes off, but ideally I'd like to see both the states and the federal government enforce net neutrality, regardless of which party controls either entity.

Somewhat related, Montana may have beat most states to the punch so to speak, but theirs was actually just an executive order (which can be reversed).

Washington, too, has already got a start on this, but unlike Washington, California looks to have acheived a rather small bill. This is a landmark for California, which is notorious for large bills.

Here is an article about Washington's bill: https://www.geekwire.com/2017/full-text-heres-washington-sta...

> California looks to have acheived a rather small bill.

The bill does nothing, so it's actually quite big for what it does. The CA bill currently under consideration that actually does something about neutrality rather than making a statement of intent (SB 460) is much bigger.

Right, that was my suspicion hence my uncertain language about it.

Related to that is my praise of California. It's more mockery than anything. Our state does not know how to write concise legislation. ;)

Weiner's legislation is pretty concise. Check out one of his latest housing bills for instance - https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...

Incidentally, this is exactly the bill that https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=dragonwriter and I were talking about.

Once again, dragonwriter's comment is that this bill "does nothing", and I joked about it being concise, because that is rare in California politics.

Sorry I had to explain this to you since you seemed to have missed it, but I couldn't leave you in the dark.

Edit: Apparently I have it wrong, this is not the same bill. Multiple tabs open :/

No, GP is pointing to a housing bill that preempts local zoning restrictions in certain cases, not the “stating future intent to adopt legislation and use existing regulatory powers” net neutrality bill.

Ah thanks.

Serious question: Is having state-level net neutrality laws actually good policy?

It allows for more experimentation than say a national level policy which is far more inflexible.

Well, sure. I get that sort of argument for something like tax policy.

But is this actually an experiment that should be run at the state level? I mean, having 50 different net neutrality laws that all actually mean and require different things doesn't strike me as being efficient.

Better than nothing. With an uncooperative federal government, we'll take what we can get.

I have been struggling with this question also. The responsibility of the state government is similar to the federal government in that they are meant to represent the interests of their citizens. Within a state it is undoubtably good policy to provide a mechanism for enforcing a positive social good like utility regulation if that is what the residents of that state want. The flip side is that the internet is necessarily interstate commerce and hence the federal government can always invoke the interstate commerce clause (the same argument they use for drug policy) to do whatever they want. However, as we see states invoking their rights to designate drug policy within their borders this seems to be a natural policy extension.

I think what you are bringing up though is the quagmire that could result from trying to build a network that has to abide by 50 different regulatory systems. I would like to see an independent third party draft regulation on net neutrality that each participating state could then adopt through their own procedures. I know that probably won't happen, but it would be nice to see a form of "collective bargaining" among the states.

Personally, it is good policy for states to support net neutrality if that is what their constituents want. But the implementation might be a shit show.

Another serious question: is having state-level net neutrality laws even Constitutional?

The FCC's repeal of net neutrality contains a preëmption clause preventing state and local governments from imposing their own inconsistent restrictions (1), and it will be using its authority under the Commerce Clause of the Constitution to defend it (2). I understand their claim to be that it's impracticable to distinguish between interstate and intrastate network traffic, and that states would only have authority to constrain the latter. (3)

I'm not sure how my dear state of California is working around that, or if this action is just kicking off a ball that will be headed directly to the courts.

(1) FCC 17-166, https://transition.fcc.gov/Daily_Releases/Daily_Business/201... , para. 195.

(2) Ibid, para. 197–204. (FCC's authority under the Commerce Clause is established in the Communications Act of 1934, updated under the Telecommunications Act of 1996. These and existing case law are cited as legal justification.)

(3) Ibid, para. 200.

The simple answer is the laws don't enforce net neutrality. They say that the state government (schools, agencies, etc) Can't purchase any networking/etc from companies that don't follow net neutrality.

Kind of like forcing "prevailing wage" on construction contracts, instead of raising minimum wage state-wide.

Hopefully someone here can shed some light on my limited understanding regulations, but aren't internet services, because they are inter-state in nature out of the jurisdiction of the state?

No, if they operate in the state then they are part of the state's jurisdiction. All terrestrial internet services would have to have some presence in the state otherwise they wouldn't be able to provide internet access. Multi-state entities have to follow the laws and regulations of each place they have a presence, not just federal laws.

Basically, if ~~the FCC~~ Verizon and Comcast loose in court, ISPs will be able to do as they please only in states with no net neutrality protections. They will have to follow both the FCC and state law otherwise.

In effect, this is highly likely to backfire. ISPs will have to spend more money than they claimed they did (before the repeal) in order to meet regulations.

I'm personally a bigger fan of mandated line sharing. This would actually foster competition. Furthermore, if the FCC were to protest it, it would be irrefutable evidence that they are captured and that NN wasn't repealed to foster competition at all.

> Basically, if ~~the FCC~~ Verizon and Comcast loose in court

You mean, if the win the challenge to the FCC repeal action and lose the effort to have that repeal preempt state neutrality laws. Win/win and Lose/moot are also possibilities.

Basically, if ~~the FCC~~ Verizon and Comcast loose in court

I don't think they will loose in court. Bows and Arrows wouldn't make it through the security check. (Commanders before the invention of firearms wouldn't be saying "fire" you see.)

How is that different than successfully trying to enforce Net Neutrality at the national level over network connections between US and other countries? If one is possible so is the other.

> The FCC's repeal of net neutrality contains a preëmption clause preventing state and local governments from imposing their own inconsistent restrictions (1), and it will be using its authority under the Commerce Clause of the Constitution to defend it (2). I understand their claim to be that it's impracticable to distinguish between interstate and intrastate network traffic, and that states would only have authority to constrain the latter. (3)

Traffic isn't being regulated, packages of services offered to customers in pure intrastate commerce, however, are.

> I'm not sure how my dear state of California is working around that, or if this action is just kicking off a ball that will be headed directly to the courts.

The bill with actual content (SB 460) includes both a direct neutrality mandate (which will be challenged on the ground you suggest), and a prohibition on state agencies contracting for internet services from providers that don't make a binding (that is, “criminal to violate” commitment to adhere to neutrality in their offerings in the state.)

Of course, both the FCCs own order (already being challenged) and the laws in response (like every previous policy action on neutrality) are inevitably headed to the courts. That's not in question.

Traffic isn't being regulated, packages of services offered to customers in pure intrastate commerce, however, are.

Being the home to so many internet based companies, California is in a position to make such a law which will have a significant effect -- perhaps. How is intra-state defined? On paper, Apple Inc. is incorporated where? Is it really Cupertino? If so, then couldn't they redirect certain traffic to a subsidiary one state over? How would California fight against companies trying to get around their law using routing tables?

The law effects the service an ISP sells to a consumer. Routing tables and where Apple is located (physically or legally) have nothing to do with it.

The net neutrality laws will be covering what a CA company can sell to CA consumers without need of regulating interstate communications. We're going to set these up in every state and let any states that actually want the bought-and-paid-for FCC decision to have it.

> We're going to set these up in every state and let any states that actually want the bought-and-paid-for FCC decision to have it.

Not sure who “we” is, but neutrality advocates are, in fact, challenging the FCC decision in court, trying to do that in Congress, and presumably will continue that effort in, at least, the 2018 midterm Congressional elections.

They are also working at the state level, but not exclusively.

Maybe they wouldn't need net neutrality laws telling monopolies how to operate if they didn't outlaw Municipal ISPs?

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/02/isp-lobby-has-alr...

If monopoly cable providers are the problem, who allowed them to become monopolies? Isn't that the real problem?

A good start, though this isn't a bill legislating net neutrality. Rather, it's a bill legislating the possibility of legislating/regulating net neutrality.

It's not really a start, since the substantive bill (SB 460) was introduced before SB 822.

Just remember that if one state is allowed to nullify the federal regulation on net neutrality, another state could probably nullify federal environmental regulations (or any other federal regulation).

There is no federal regulation on net neutrality. They REMOVED the regulation a few months ago. You can't nullify nothing.

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