Feds move to block California’s net neutrality law
theverge.com
theverge.com
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.
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.
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.
It's simply not a legitimate concern to most politicians. Look into the voting records of these flip-floppers. I'm sure you'll find that they more often than not side with lobbyists rather than the will of their electorate.
There are theoretical and ideological debates to be had about "states rights," but politicians are interested primarily in exercising power, not in having philosophical debates about the precise balance of powers required for good governance. If an elected official speaks of "states rights," it's usually just a bad faith argument to throw people off the scent of their actual agenda.
I'm fascinated by the push on laws around what people must wear, say on Florida beaches, contrasted with pushback on laws around what people must wear, say in Florida beach shops.
Does the government have the right to make you wear fabric for both face coverage and butt coverage, or neither?
And from the bottom up, each country believes they're the ruler of their country and don't like to be told by the countries higher up the totem what to do.
To be honest though, i've always felt like the world would work a lot better if power were structured from the bottom up. Local areas have the highest priority in decisions regarding their area then each level up has less and less power and is focused more on the overall organizing of everything between these smaller areas and the rest of the world.
The way it works in many places right now is backwards, especially in large countries. It ends up that decisions are made about areas hundreds or thousands of km away from the people affected by those decisions.
This is the origin story for environmental protection in this country.
So probably that's a factor here. If you are in the federal government and you know California has the power to de facto dictate federal policy by passing a law at the state level, the only good defense is a proactive offense.
Wood and stone dust cause cancer. Coffee and alcohol may cause cancer. None of those things are on the same level as tobacco, tanning beds etc. There is a massive spectrum, and the labels themselves don't offer that information.
As such, people depending on the labels may incorrectly assume that using a crescent wrench is as dangerous as smoking tobacco, or vice versa.
Even with that case, you will find people who, even if supporting California on its right to promulgate its own air regulations, then turn around and object to other states doing something they don't like, using that same principle.
It seems principles are principles to the extent we agree with them.
Small rural states with similar ideals can form voting blocks and have the benefit of 2 Gauranteed Senators. That plus the electoral college method of presidential elections puts a ton of power in their hands.
I'd call this a feature of the system. Ironically it's "states rights" and the pressure of adopting an existing system ("free market") that's serving the left instead of the right in this case.
For example, when Lee Harvey Oswald shot President Kennedy in Dallas Texas, Oswald did not violate a federal crime. There was no law on the books at the federal level which made it a crime to shoot the President. However, murder in the State of Texas was illegal, which is what Oswald was being charged with by Texas courts and by Texas law enforcement.
This has become more and more muddied over time with the expansion of federal powers. More things have become illegal at the federal level, and federal courts have expanded the influence of the Bill of Rights over State laws (see Incorporation[0]). There is a good bit of debate in the US about this growth of federal powers and the role of federal laws in day to day life. Sometimes it is obviously a good thing, sometimes it a bit more complicated. Note in this comment I am not attempting to argue either way, just trying to share knowledge with someone not from the US.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incorporation_of_the_Bill_of_R...
Some things I'm fine being decided federally, others I prefer states. These various scenarios allow for that so I think it's a great flexibility of the system.
Luckily, elections are coming up in November.
[0] This may have veered off-topic.
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.
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.
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.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separation_of_powers#Checks_...
One downside to this is that a branch can also significantly obstruct things if they decide to.
Serving the American people isn't on the list.
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.
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.
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.
Certainly not in the US Constitution.
What a slippery slope.
an argument can be made that intrastate impacts interstate, but not sure where the threshold lies - AFAIK you don't have alcohol companies suing in court to oppose local alcolhol regulations on this basis, etc, as an example (though I'm sure they lobby heavily).
For state and local laws, it would be a matter of the corresponding state constitution - but it's less of an issue on that level, because state constitutions are generally not written in such a way as to restrict the power of the government to a few explicitly enumerated things.
> Where necessary to make a regulation of interstate commerce effective, Congress may regulate even those intrastate activities that do not themselves substantially affect interstate commerce.
From 2005's Gonzales v. Raich
Liberty of the governed to set laws at a local level (where they do not conflict with Constitutionally-protected rights and powers enumerated to the federal government).
You're about 200 years too late to be arguing that there's no basis in the US Constitution.
The massive expansion and erosion of the meaning of interstate commerce didn't begin until Wickard v Filburn in 1942.
Redefining "interstate" is a mistake that one would hope that at least libertarian conservatives (who deliberately avoid expansionary scope creep without limit) would oppose.
Wickard v Filburn held that the Commerce Clause extends to regulating the growing of wheat for personal consumption, that involved no commercial transactions whatsoever.
--- David FriedmanThat gloss on Wickard v. Filburn was a self-fulfilling prophecy. Filburn both sold his wheat crop and used it to feed his livestock which he also sold on the market.
I never understood why legal scholars, especially conservative legal scholars, so adamantly adhered to the notion that Wickard would clearly apply to purely private use. I tend to think it's out of spite--so upset about a decision that they promoted an unreasonable interpretation as a way to vindicate their ire.
It wasn't until Gonzales v. Raich (2005) that the court clearly stated Commerce Clause powers could extend to purely personal harvest and use, where neither the product (wheat, marijuana) nor derivatives (hogs, THC brownies) would be sold[1]. And ironically (or not so ironically), it was Scalia that cast the deciding vote.[2] And why did he do it? Basically because of reliance interests--Scalia worried the legal basis for the War on Drugs would come crashing down, and that would be too disruptive. But that's tautological--it only makes sense if you ignore the facts in Wickard and the commercial nature of the drug trade. Self... fulfilling... prophecy.... :(
[1] The counter-argument is that the Wickard opinion talks about the excess wheat consumed on the farm displacing demand for purchasing wheat. But he was already a commercial farmer--it was a matter of regulating commercial demand and commercial supply. And wheat is perfectly fungible, afterall, so of what matter is it that some small portion of the wheat might have gone directly to his table? The quotas were well in excess of what would be needed for purely personal consumption, direct and indirect. The notion of displaced demand can be easily cabined to the context of a commercial enterprise, and it strains credulity to believe the Wickard justices thought otherwise. Filburn wasn't a subsistence farmer, and wheat was a direct input to his commercial livestock. So analogizing that situation to homegrown marijuana displacing demand for, e.g, commercial medications is ridiculous (or, at the very least, an analogy one could just as easily reject as accept, again circling back to this notion that the parade of horribles from Wickard was wholly self-inflicted).
[2] And because of his Gonzales decision, for the Obamacare personal mandate Scalia was forced to retreat to a tenuous distinction between mandates and prohibitions, a distinction that would have been entirely unnecessary if he wasn't committed to the Wickard mythos[3]. If he had sided with the other conservatives in Gonzales, it would have been clear that the Commerce Clause couldn't support an individual mandate any more than a private use prohibition. (That would still leave open taxing powers as a basis, however, just as Roberts concluded.)
[3] Apropos HN, s/mythos/cargo cult/
Besides, why even focus on selling in the first place? The Commerce Clause doesn't make a distinction between selling and buying, so if participating in the market as a seller is enough to put any activity that affects your supply within scope, then why wouldn't participating in the market as a buyer do so just the same for any activity that affects your demand?
You're claiming that it didn't readily follow - but, well, if it wasn't until Raichs that anybody even tried seriously challenging that notion in court, then it sounds like it did readily follow in practice.
Quality work!
Arguments over the interstate commerce clause of the constitution aside, I find it really hard to believe an _Internet_ service provider doesn't move anything over state lines, which is clearly within the federal government's jurisdiction.
It's huge, national providers like Comcast and Time Warner that are sparking the majority of concerns around net neutrality. On a practical level, nobody is super worried about predatory behavior from, say, Cruzio, an independent ISP serving Santa Cruz County.
Let’s hope this is not followed. CARB is terribly implemented. The agency is corrupt and considered rogue.
One of many resources online: https://www.ocregister.com/2015/05/29/california-air-resourc...
For instance, the FCC can't sue California over smog controls because clean air isn't under the FCC's jurisdiction. Well, the FCC has claimed, in court, that net neutrality is also not under their jurisdiction. Their claims under oath are contradictory: either they have the power to enforce net neutrality (in which case it should still be federal law) or they don't (in which case they don't have grounds to tell California that CA can't enforce it).
Pai isn't actually making a bad decision here. The problem is that "net neutrality" isn't a bad idea but that's not what the ruling promotes at all. The ruling seeks to interpret ISPs as common carriers: That much is true. But the knock-on effects of that are not at all as advertised. Among other problems, in order to lay new fiber ISPs must seek approval from the DOD and Secretary of State. This is a tremendously high hurdle to meet making it difficult for small players to enter the market and making the market ripe for exploitation. Arguably, it lead directly to the situation much of the US faces with vast swathes of area being controlled by only one or two entrants. Since the ruling was repealed several years ago, we've actually seen an explosion in new fiber and average internet speeds rise rapidly across the US. This is a good thing. All the language about "internet fast lanes" was mere propaganda: It didn't happen before the ruling and it didn't happen after the repeal.
I haven't read the California legislation and I don't plan to. But given the surprisingly positive results of Pai's work so far, I have faith his position is couched in reason and understanding. Another hundred articles saying we'll get "internet fast lanes" if the common carrier rule isn't applied to ISPs doesn't change the fact that applying that particular rule has powerful drawbacks completely unrelated to people's position.
The strange thing is if we drafted a new law which completely omitted any consequences relative to the Communications Act of 1960 and explicitly forbade internet fast lanes I would support it and I suppose Pai might as well.
Edit: Changed typo "is" to "isn't" in 2nd to last sentence.
Wheeler when he classified Internet as Title II, made exclusion that ISPs that currently have infrastructure are not required (under Title II they are) to lease it to competitors. We don't need 10 different fiber wires coming to our house, since most likely we will only use one, all we need is to be able to chose between ISPs and that ISP can reuse existing infrastructure, kind of like it was with selecting long distance call provider on land lines, or ISP on DSL (which was automatically under Title II already, do you remember how much competition was back then? if you had phone line from PacBell, you didn't have to have internet from them, we had sites like dslreports where people could compare and chose the best one).
What residential Internet needs, is separation of the last mile with the ISP (kind of like it is in data centers, you have separate company that maintains all wiring and separate company that provides service).
Since neither FCC chairman wanted this simple solution to enable competition once again. We need consumer protection, and this comes down to net neutrality. NN forbids ISPs from interfering with the service, that's it, the California law basically reinstated those protections. We desperately need them because the "propaganda" is not far from the truth. Just look at the latest acquisitions. Comcast now owns all content from NBC Universal, AT&T owns all content from TimeWarner. Why would ISPs enter this market if they wouldn't see some benefits of their current position. Now they are already bundling those services together, and with lack of net neutrality they can prioritize their content over others. Why did we even allowed to get to this point?
Again - that would have been great if it were what the ruling actually did. It's not.
Around 2014 (IIRC) Verizon, sued FCC saying that they have no right of controlling ISPs and court ruled that Verizon was right. That ruling basically removed FCC right to control the Internet, but it hinted that they can reclassify it.
Immediately petitions and protests started asking FCC to reclassify Internet back to Title II (communication service[2]).
Obama sided with population, and Wheeler reclassified internet to Title II in 2015 (with some exemptions, like the requirement to lease infrastructure). After Trump wins he immediately started dismantling everything Obama did, which included the reclassification back to Title I (which according to the ruling FCC has no control anymore).
So as you see the ruling wasn't about NN but about whether FCC has control over service classified under Title I (information services). It has nothing about Title II (communication services).
[1] You might also notice that ISPs (which was a lot of them in late 1990 and early 2000), started disappearing around that time
[2] Despite the misinformation, Internet started as Title II, since it was initially provided by telcos, which were under Title II. Unlike today, back then we had large choice of ISPs o chose from since Title II required leasing lines to competitors.
Also strange you bothered to mention the Communications Act of 1960. It would be far more relevant for you to have read the Telecommunications Act of 1996, as that made some significant changes to the law since 1960.
I guess you need to go back and re-read those documents.
Do you mean the Telecommunication Act of 1996 or the Communications Act of 1934? Or the Communications Amendments Act of 1960?
Because the first and second are relevant here, but while the last did make changes to the 1934 Act, those aren't really germane to the 2018 Open Internet order.
> Among other problems, in order to lay new fiber ISPs must seek approval from the DOD and Secretary of State.
No, it did not require that.
> Arguably, it lead directly to the situation much of the US faces with vast swathes of area being controlled by only one or two entrants.
No, unless you suggest retrocausality, that's not at all arguable; that situation was in place well before the 2015 order at issue, which was in effect for less than 3 years and not enforced for much of that time because the Pai opposed it even though it was on the books and nominally in force.
> Since the ruling was repealed several years ago
It was only two years ago (the repeal became effective in June 2018.)
I think the FCC position is wrong, but the Clean Air Act has an express allowance for California Waivers (for which there are limited reasons the feds can deny) to issue stricter standards (and for other states to adopt exactly standards for which California has received a waiver) notwithstanding general preemption of state regulation under the Act.
So that's not really a good analogy, since there's nothing parallel to that with regard to telecom 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.
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.
I don't know if that should make you feel better or worse.
"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-...
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...
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.
This is actually worse, if you're a Californian you're paying for both sides of the argument.
Perhaps it's somehow special here, but that's my understanding of anything and everything that crosses state lines.
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
States should fight back against this foolery.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Think maybe we could actually get the Republicans on board with net neutrality?
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.
Attempts to expand broadband service run by municipalities forcefully opposed by AT&T and Comcast.
No Republicans there will even understand the point your trying to make, or at best they will think you are foolish. After 40 years of demonization of political opponents, it's all about "with us or against us."
There's also a significant number of leftists who feel the same way about liberals, though this is a tiny chunk of them that speaks far louder than their numbers are, and who do not hold power in proportion to their loudness.
Let's stop with this false equivalency.
One party has done everything in its power to gerrymander, discredit the electoral process, and put lobbyists in power. One party has consistently appealed to racism. One party has appealed to discrediting the value of effective government.
The Road Rage Party ... has seemed an appropriate way to describe the GOP in recent years.
> in its power to gerrymander
Republicans (I doubt anyone will complain about this one)
> discredit the electoral process
Primarily Democrats (National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, concern over mail-in voting prior to 2015, renewed concern over the past month or so), with some Republican (concern over mail-in ballots over the past half-year or so)
> put lobbyists in power
Honestly not paying much attention here
> One party has consistently appealed to racism
Democrats (probably the most prominent recent thing being Biden's "you ain't black", but there's plenty more)
> One party has appealed to discrediting the value of effective government
Not sure about the "appealed to", but between impeachment with no evidence and The Squad, I have to give this one to Democrats as well.
Listen to leftists, and they will be pointing out these cases, because the Democratic leadership and power structure is consistent in support of militarism, whether or not the Democrats are in power, and leftists give them hell for it.
Can you find diversity of opinion within political parties? Of course. But pointing to diversity of opinion is a hugely different thing than the leadership of parties swapping positions I'm supposed ideals like "fiscally conservative" depending on whether or not they are doing the spending.
This isn't a uniquely Republican point of view, nor is it as prevalent among the Republican voter base as you imply.
Have you lived up north recently? Specifically the so-called "tech hubs" are filled with vile and judgemental people who will stop at nothing in the pursuit of groupthink and monoculture.
However, when it comes to rural areas, areas that don't even have leftists but may have a few liberals, my experience is that the anti-lib stance is the overriding view, along with being pro-gun, pro-God (at least in theory), and pro-fossil fuel. It's a cultural war more than a political war, in-tribe versus out-of-tribe. For Democrats, the culture war does not extend to swapping values on the national stage depending on who is in power, it only seems to be loca control of housing.
> vile and judgemental people who will stop at nothing in the pursuit of groupthink and monoculture
Just start quoting Jordan Peterson and save us the implications and dancing around your point.
I am anti-net-neutrality for the same reasons I'm for de-funding the police: there are smarter ways than direct remote control for solving certain issues. Starlink (for example) does tenfold more for a neutral internet than any FCC ever has. A neutral internet does not require the California Internet Consumer Protection and Net Neutrality Act.
Smarter ways that don't work don't help. There might be smarter ways to prevent monopoly abuse than anti-trust laws (and net neutrality is idea of the same category like other competition laws), but monopolists have a lot of power to counteract those ways once they are already entrenched. They never play fair.
Google tried with Fiber. It went so well because of fair entrenched incumbents, didn't it?
The big hold up is that Trump is against it, and very few Republican office holders are willing to go against him regardless of how far his position is from what their constituents want.
Ideally, picking the President over your own constituents on too many issues would lead to your constituents electing someone else at the next opportunity, but the Republican Senate leadership is able to block any bills from the House on those issues so that they don't even come up for a Senate vote thus saving Republican Senators from having to cast votes that would either annoy Trump or their constituents.
Maybe if you build your ISP in Kentucky, and explicitly tell anyone who complains that "thanks to Mitch McConnell keeping net neutrality from a Senate vote, it is legal" it might help.
As someone who has done this in these states I think you should do it, or at least try! If you can get enough customers to matter then we should definitely talk. It's harder than it sounds.
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.
That's like saying I can go out and start my own bank or make my own payment processor.
Actually it is not that difficult in a densely populated area using modern wireless networking technologies. NYC Mesh is the example that immediately comes to my mind -- they have installed repeaters on dozens of rooftops and have plenty of peering relationships (though AFAIK they do not provide transit because they are only connected to a single IXP). I also know someone who worked for a wireless ISP in a rural area, though they ultimately went bankrupt probably because of the higher cost per customer in sparsely populated regions (probably the reason rural areas are invariably stuck with a local monopoly that provides terrible service at a high price).
Of course, providing competitive service is a different story, and is far more capital intensive...
... which is why people say it's impossible to start an ISP. Building the local part is relatively easy, but, one, how many backhaul networks serve your region, and, two, how many of them are willing to provide service to an entity robbing them of their rightful monopoly on selling overpriced triple-play contracts to everyone in the state?
As for ISPs selling service, it is not all that hard to get a contract. ISPs like Hurricane Electric will sell service to anyone who can be colocated with one of their POPs, and they are pretty widely distributed (they do not provide residential service and would have no reason to refuse to sell service to a residential ISP). Verizon and AT&T also have wholesale contracts that in theory a smaller ISP could use, and I doubt they would begrudge an ISP that is competing with them in some local market (especially since a small ISP will almost certainly not be able to provide a triple-play package or any form bundling at all, so the big players will always have the upper hand). "Enterprise" transit services can also be used, if you can afford the prices ISPs demand for those contracts (or more precisely, if you can effectively pass the cost on to your residential users). You may have to build out a backhaul to some large building where you can get a fiber connection, but that is not an insurmountable barrier to entry.
You can always start your own power company if you fancy the other political party.
He's mocking those that believe service providers like Facebook and Youtube should be able to discriminate against content they dislike. If YouTube are allowed to regulate content because they're a private company and "go build your own", then by the same logic, why can't the ISPs?
I've seen people here make that exact same argument with much praise when the topic is whether or not Facebook should be allowed to regulate user submitted content.
I suppose whether or not its sarcastic isn't that important. What's more interesting why there appears to be a kind of hypocritical support for net neutrality, but an opposition to neutrality on global communications platforms like Facebook?
I can go to another business, but likely neither me nor the business can choose another power company.
Also it is not the power company's fault if the business denies me access to merchandise in that business.
I'm forced to use the services of YouTube as they're the only video hosting service with a global reach thanks to network effects. What if after 5 years of running a successful business on YouTube they decide they don't like my reporting on COVID-19 and ban my business from their service?
Why should I care about net neutrality potentially limiting access to my website which only receives a few visits a day? The reality is it's far more damaging to an online business today to not have a high search ranking on Google and a good following on YouTube and Facebook -- without this you're invisible on the web, you may as well not exist.
It's possible to have a billion dollars, and use the interest on that money in the bank to do other things. If we don't consider this situation wrong, we can't consider network effects wrong.
Also Youtube is not required to access anything needed for survival or civic functioning. No one is forcing those people to sign up for YouTube.
There is nothing stopping anything from thinking long term, planting seeds, and creating their own network effects and getting people off of YouTube.
> Why should I care about net neutrality potentially limiting access to my website which only receives a few visits a day?
Above is why.
why can't you just punch anyone in the face?
why can't you set the forest on fire?
why can't you buy living people?
don't get me wrong, all these things you list are IMHO very bad and shouldn't be on the internet, but let's create institutions that have the right tools to filter them (these tools include new laws). ISPs have the right tools to forward packets.
So how is an ISP supposed to do it, then, if there is no NN? Doesn't the same argument work there, too?
Imagine if Airlines block you from flying everywhere, but the place you want to travel to hasn't blocked you from entering it. They should not have that power, expect in extremely rare cases
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/racist-...
In this metaphor that'd be like an ISP blocking a customer because they were hacking other customers, which is fine.
If the person offended sought out the content I do not think the content should be banned (assuming the content was legal speech).
Try running a DDOS attack without the ISP blocking you. Or try accessing banned content, without workarounds.
A good read on who should be held responsible, written by Cloudflare's CEO. https://blog.cloudflare.com/why-we-terminated-daily-stormer/
Verizon the broadband provider should make no determinations based on the content of any message they carry.
You're absolutely right. I condemn all the phone companies and mail carriers who do nothing to stop people from using their services for hate speech. They should listen in on every call, and open every envelope, to ensure content is acceptable.
Sarcasm, in case that wasn't clear.
Because, to use a transportation analogy, your ISP is like a taxi service and YouTube is like a store in the mall. We let stores in the mall decide who is allowed in (subject to certain broad antidiscrimination laws), but we don't let taxis refuse customers that want to go to any particular store in the mall.
- permit people to offer infrastructure
- indemnify them from the acts users commit while using the infrastructure (push law enforcement up to the gov)
- in exchange, force them to not be able to select who uses the infrastructure (push discrimination up to the gov)
Essentially, it's useful to have private parties provide unified public services. This allows you to privatize certain things (power generation, trains, the DMV if you desired, etc.) while retaining the privileges and duties the operator has to comply with if they were the government.
There's obviously nuance to it, but if you wanted to know, that's the gist of it.