The FCC voted to reimplement net neutrality. Now comes the hard part | Hacker News Reader

The FCC voted to reimplement net neutrality. Now comes the hard part

nationaljournal.com

94 pointscratermoon55 comments

Remember during the public commentary about removing it, there were millions of automated messages claiming to be pro-removal? What ever happened with that? Did anyone ever get in trouble?

Ajit Pai deemed the issue unimportant so they took no action Federally and then voted to kill NN. Eric Schneiderman, New York's AG, began an investigation since a bunch of the fake comments used real people's information, so they had an 'identity theft' nexus to state laws -- but Pai refused to aid the investigation in any way:

https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/21/16686644/eric-schneiderm...

That's the problem with electing people who don't believe in democracy or civil service, they have so many levers to use to dismantle things including just straight obstruction. Echos of the FEC's corruption, where several members tasked with upholding election law have decided they're just not going to do that, contrary to the professional staff who've indicated that laws were likely broken:

https://www.fec.gov/files/legal/murs/7968/7968_14.pdf

So disheartening. It's insane that in the US that public officials aren't held accountable for basically defrauding the public, like a banana republic. Worst of all, most people don't even care. I don't even recall orgs like Fight for the Future even trying to hold anyone accountable for this.

https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/east/2023/05/11/720346...

The data was “accidentally” deleted.

Is the title the actual article? The only extra info in the page is a semi-unrelated pic.

Looks like it's only available to members with an account, but accounts can only be obtained via "contact us" (and probably a very expensive subscription).

Here's an "unlocked" link (good until Nov 19th): https://www.nationaljournal.com/s/723252/the-fcc-voted-to-re...

Snapshot: https://web.archive.org/web/20231110203104/https://www.natio...

(I used the Wayback Machine because both archive.is and archive.ph are endless captcha loops.)

Here is a backup of the unlocked link: https://archive.is/hBf2Z

That's an endless cloudflare captcha loop, but ty

> That's an endless cloudflare captcha loop

Yeah. It's an ongoing issue (but not the old Cloudflare one).

There are workarounds but they have to be put in place.

ref https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38171778

ref https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38063548#38063580

It's a fake spite captcha.

Had this issue a few days ago changing DNS to quad9 seems to resolve it

Sadly, I can't get past the "continue" button prompt.

There should be no need, you can just use uBlock to remove the entire prompt, since it doesn't scroll-lock the page.

https://archive.is/hBf2Z

And there's been no changes since it was supposedly gotten rid of (in reality, we never had it in the first place). My internet speed has gotten much faster in fact.

I feel that SCOTUS will have to put this Net Neutrality debate to a end one way or another. Even if it's voted upon, expect lawsuits and legal battles that eventually, the highest court will have to get involved and we'll know if it's allowed to stand, or closing the books on consumer protections for a generation.

That's not the SCOTUS' job.

The legislative branch sets these rules. The judiciary just interprets them and makes sure the rule set is self consistent (new rules don't break existing rules). The SCOTUS has no business in drawing these lines.

In the previous chapter of this years long battle, a appeals court ruled that the Pai-led FCC can kill Net Neutrality on the federal level but allowed states to create their own rules, something that the FCC wanted but failed to preempt states's rules.

Also, the ISP lobby tried to kill California's state law but was defeated three times. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/05/stung-by-3-court...

I expect the same battles to be fought when the FCC get the final votes on it and like I said, the Supreme Court may have to get involved to put an end to the back and fourth as ISPs will try their hardest to get to the highest court.

>The SCOTUS has no business in drawing these lines.

What's interesting about the US Constitution is that SCOTUS is the final arbiter of the limit and extent of the powers of the three branches of government. The words of the constitution (or statute) might say: 'SCOTUS has no business in drawing these lines' and SCOTUS can simply decide: "Those words do not really mean what they appear to say. We hereby rule that SCOTUS does have the right to draw these lines and hereby do so." (or any other issue you want to imagine).

And there isn't much the other branches of government (or the American people) can do about it other than: 1. impeach enough members of SCOTUS to alter the unfavorable decision; 2. increase the size of SCOTUS and appoint enough members to alter the unfavorable decision; or 3. declare a revolutionary war (and win) and create a new government

SCOTUS is the one branch of government with virtually unlimited and unchecked power; is appointed for life; and is not elected. Although the scope of its power has increased immensely over the past ~225 years, what is amazing is that it has remained in relative "check". IMO there is zero reason to expect that to continue to be true for another 200 years.

The check on SCOTUS is that it doesn't have any law enforcing powers. They're just men and women in long cloaks writing things down. Also, SCOTUS members can be impeached and they can say "no that impeachment is invalid" all they like as the police escort them out of the building.

Government is not like programming a computer. If everyone treats the government like it has power, then it has power. If everyone collectively agrees it doesn't have power then it starts to lack power.

The courts will rule on three things:

(1) Whether the legislature has given the FCC sufficient regulatory authority for the policy. (See Comcast v FCC which the FCC lost.)

(2) Whether the legislature or the FCC's actions comply with the Constitution.

(3) Whether the FCC enforcement complies with their rules.

SCOTUS has always played a role in determining whether or not executive branch rules are in keeping with constitutional understandings, at least since Marbury.

Which branch of government is the FCC?

It's the Executive Branch, which is headed by PotUS

Executive, with rule-making authority. (Rules that can be changed by the legislative branch)

Precisely. Which is why it will end up being decided by the courts. Because the legislative branch hasn't passed a law. The unelected, unaccountable committee that changes at the whim of the president is not the place to legislate. If you want to pass a law, pass a law.

Unelected in a way, but their boss is elected, and they are absolutely accountable. There is no “whim” upon which these rules change, there was however an election that replaced their boss with someone else.

You either care about accountability and therefore laud their changing position based on that accountability, or you’re just parroting a blind argument conservatives have been making for a number of years now because you don’t like their most recent decision.

> closing the books on consumer protections for a generation.

That sounds serious, and for a generation.

I have not understood the 'consumer protections' argument. If an ISP allows traffic requests from a residence, then what is the problem? I haven't noticed how I may have been harmed by not having NN.

You get to do that because of net neutrality. The FCC in 2005 made it clear that ISPs couldn't block online services (Madison River blocking VoIP). In 2008, the FCC stopped Comcast from blocking Bittorent, establishing precedent that network management should be application agnostic. Then on 2015 the FCC said it had authority over interconnection, which stopped AT&T, Comcast and Verizon from throttling Netflix, League of Legends and Cogent at the point of interconnection (shaking them down for payment). That meant 10s of millions of Americans could actually play games and watch videos.

So yes if you get to do what you want to do online, that's because of 20 years of net neutrality oversight

You mixed in throttling. Bandwidth, like fluid pipelines, have fixed capacity. The pipeline providers can not provide greater bandwidth without somebody paying. If they can't charge Netflix for high usage, the costs are shifted to consumers. In your example with Netflix bandwidth, I end up paying for Netflix's excess bandwidth usage. Your NN forces higher consumer costs and greater profits to Netflix owners.

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