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Comment by danso | Hacker News Reader

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

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I 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?

Are 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.

I think that feeling is typical for many, democracy is fair when my team wins or a sports referee is fair when they favour your team.

Feeds into the victim narrative when things go the other way.

Democracy is not fair, it is "mob rules" by definition.

Democracy is not always populist. People have voted against direct self interest for the benefit for others for quite some time.

Good thing the US is a constitutional republic, then.

Almost like the founders knew that "mob rules" was a bad idea...

A lot of the framers (if you're going to be a pedant, use the right words) knew that "mob rules" had troublesome implications with respect to the humans they claimed ownership of.

Would you like to roll back civil rights because they are not fair, because it’s discriminatory and therefore unfair?

The obvious bias of the US Judiciary has resulted in low public confidence - not sure where you've been?

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2025/01/03/opinion/scotus-ethics...

I'm not sure how you came to this conclusion, when their comment stated in the very first line: "court rulings that rarely appear to be in favor of people over companies".

But answering your strawman: when you have a bipartisan system with both parties led by companies I don't really have a clue how one can seek to change companies-favoring status quo/laws, but I'm willing to be educated - please help.

> But answering your strawman: when you have a bipartisan system with both parties led by companies […]

One of the parties in the US has been pushing for net neutrality[1][2] and another has been getting rid of it.[3]

If you think the two parties are equivalent (on a variety of topics [4][5][6][7]), I'm not sure where you are getting your information from, but it is not accurate.

[1] https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/net-neutrality

[2] https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/blog/2014/11/10/preside...

[3] https://www.vox.com/2017/12/14/16771910/trump-fcc-ajit-pai-n...

[4] https://aflcio.org/press/releases/donald-trumps-catastrophic...

[5] https://cwa-union.org/trumps-anti-worker-record

[6] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/dec/02/trump-al...

[7] https://time.com/7201582/donald-trump-vaccines-fact-check-20...

Thank you for the links! Then I don't understand something: if this one party supported some topic, any topic, how come said topic is not made into law but only lives in the internal regulations of some organization? Courts applying existing law will then by necessity strike those down, by definition: if it's not in the law it will not be recognized by the courts. Simple. So the whole complaining "court strikes down something" is pointless, because the courts function as designed. I'd say the problem is the parties which don't bother making supporting laws - yes even the parties claiming to support said topic. How can a party holding majorities (in a two party system one party will always have majority) even temporary, not actually make laws? Isn't this the very reason parties exist? So I'm still confused.

> So the whole complaining "court strikes down something" is pointless, because the courts function as designed.

The courts are judged by humans who have biases and motivated reasoning:

* https://www.nycla.org/resource/blog/hon-aileen-cannon-wrote-...

* http://archive.is/https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/...

* https://ccf.georgetown.edu/2024/10/11/trump-appointed-federa...

People (judges) sometimes go into court with an pre-conceived notion of what is the 'correct' way to interpret things, and they think it is 'objective', but in fact has been shaped over time by (active) cultural forces:

* http://magazine.law.nyu.edu/index.html%3Fp=7606.html

My point was: if there's no law about something I cannot have any expectations from courts, so why there's no law?

It's really hard to pass a non-budgetary law without a supermajority.

So the solution is to have the judiciary become defacto legislators?

They're doing that right now. That's what defacto means.

So the three powers system is broken? Almost "by design" one could say, although it seemed to have worked for a while, maybe when the level of sophistication was lower (but whose level?). Or maybe there was a time when the actors tried to use the system, not actively seeking tricks to abuse it?

Obviously the problem here is that the judicial branch still works too well, and need to be broken like the rest of the government.

Then and only then, when every branch of government at every level has so much friction that the offices themselves burn to the ground, will we be able to enjoy the freedom that God and the Founding Fathers intended.

If the government that governs least governs best, then the government that governs best doesn't govern at all.

Which would make the founding fathers founding... nothing?

> So the three powers system is broken?

Obviously it's broken, because it's not doing what I wish it would.

Are you sure it's not broken because it's functionally an oligarchy?

The Chevron doctrine, which was recently overturned by the US supreme court, stated that US courts should defer to the regulations of US agencies such as the FCC. As I understand, under Chevron, functionally, the FCC's regulations on telecommunications were law to the courts and the corporations.

It seems to me that it's unreasonable to expect Congress itself to have informed, correct opinions on technically complex topics. There are a limited number of Congressmembers, most of whom are not technically skilled. Delegating regulation to domain experts who remain accountable to Congress seems like a reasonable solution. If Congress disagreed with the FCC's handling of the situation, couldn't they have made a law to overturn the FCC's decision or limit its authority?

Overturning Chevron is a victory for deregulation in general. As I understand, Congress could pass laws to explicitly reinstate the authority that the FCC previously held. However, pro-deregultion factions (I assume mostly Republicans, but I don't really know) now have a chance to block that, and even the supporters of NN have other fish to fry.

Essentially overturning Chevron curtailed the authority of regulatory agencies-- authority which Congress expected them to have, and could have restricted at any time--without going through Congress. Yes, it's the job of the court system to interpret laws. But when they change interpretations which other laws depend on, that's basically changing the laws themselves, isn't it?

Okay thank you this answers fully my question. I guess one could make that "Chevron doctrine" into law, a one-time law, then we'd have the issue solved right? So not making laws for every single topic, just enshrine that FCC and others make "laws", then the courts would have to respect that. Of course unless they contradict other laws, thus the courts will still not run out of cases, but at least you'd have some more predictability. But if the whole system relies more on precedent cases instead of explicit laws, you can never reach that predictability (see Roe vs Wade)...

I don't know of any reason why they couldn't make the Chevron Doctrine law. However, I doubt that the Republican congressmembers will let it happen any time soon.

Disclaimer: I'm not very informed, I just did a little Googling and then summarized it as an exercise to try to reinforce my own understanding.

> It seems to me that it's unreasonable to expect Congress itself to have informed, correct opinions on technically complex topics.

Actually, that is exactly my expectation of my representatives. They have the resources and connections to find experts and become reasonably versed in these topics so we should expect them to have informed correct opinions on complex topics or they shouldn't be in the job.

> They have the resources and connections to find experts and become reasonably versed in these topics so we should expect them to have informed correct opinions on complex topics or they shouldn't be in the job.

Do they have the time?

There are only so many hours in the day and week, and only so many things that are able to be done in ((sub-)sub-)committees in those hours. Further, legislators have to pass law on every conceivable topic, whereas agencies have a focus (FCC, FAA, FDA, Coast Guard, etc).

And if the situation changes the legislators may have to circle back and pass new bills/regulations and that may take a while given finite resources (time) and other priorities, so various industries may languish in sub-optimal environments due to outdated legislation.

That's the whole point of the agencies (and executive?): delegation to subject matter experts so legislators aren't mired in minutia and can perhaps look at the bigger picture.

In an ideal world, I agree. But Congress is made up of the most electable people, not the most competent people. I would rather they recognize that and delegate rather than trying to make laws about complex topics which can easily backfire, or just taking no action at all.

Perhaps supernova87a thinks the court system is doing a great and highly professional job of enforcing a bad set of laws handed to them by an failing legislature?

Much like a professional painter and decorator can demonstrate great care, precision and craftsmanship in applying the paint, even if the customer chose an ugly-ass colour.

Thanks for your comment, and this is a reply to others who have replied.

I wouldn't go so far as to say the courts are doing a great job. But they are doing their job to interpret the laws that have been written. Far more conscientiously than the political branches. Interpretations of the law are yes, sometimes interpretations that may favor one side over another, because laws are not always clear down to the very last edge case or issue that was not anticipated at their writing, and high level principles (sometimes laws have to be at this level) can be interpreted different ways. If that were not true, then you would hardly need a judiciary. That is their role.

But to say that the judicial system has been corrupted and is biased, only because in recent years has made more rulings against "my side" when the issue is not clear cut, is to undermine one of the institutions that takes its job relatively seriously. If we adopt this perspective, why are Republican/MAGA opinions that the judicial system is corrupt because they got ruled against so many times, not equally legitimate? Who is to decide that your saying the system is biased is more worthy than theirs?

How can we sustain a system where if the rulings go my way, then the system = trustworthy? A key distinguishing aspect of an advanced democratic society (cf. January 2022) is the acceptance of rulings and elections that don't go your way. And that courts rule based on law.

Many of the things that laws were originally written for are not covering the situations that are arising now. If you want to make the outcome different, go and change the laws and make it clear what the rules should be. Update them for technology developments, for changes in societal expectations. There is a mechanism for that. And the judiciary will have to adhere to the laws and Constitution to rule on them.

Courts are not equipped to be legislative bodies, and if you put that expectation on them, you are changing their scope and role. And not for the better. Judges will get elected for their favoring of one side over another, or to be writing laws while ruling on cases. That's not something I want our democracy or separation of powers system to start doing.

And if Congress is broken, that reflects the troubling divisions we have in society -- no court will be able to fix that (without actually corrupting what the courts are for).

You can look at opinions on recent rulings by their peers and determine they use motivated reasoning in their ruling to achieve the desired political outcome.

I'm not condoning some of that in recent rulings. But also ask yourself, is this the first time you noticed it, and that wasn't happening for rulings over the past 20 years for cases where you happened to agree with the outcome? Only sudden interest in applying that principle now, I guess?

>>Courts rule on laws.

Not always. They invent laws. They defy laws. They defy common sense. For example "qualified immunity" is invented out of thin air, while "the spirit of Aloha says US Constitution does not apply to Hawai" is defiance. "boneless chicken does not mean it has no bones, but it is a style of cooking" is totally nuts. All the examples are Supreme Courts cases.

This is not about winning or losing, it is about judicial system not fair and not impartial, sometimes borderline crazy.

> "the system is corrupted"

"Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence. The results provide substantial support for theories of Economic-Elite Domination and for theories of Biased Pluralism, but not for theories of Majoritarian Electoral Democracy or Majoritarian Pluralism."[1]

1. http://www.princeton.edu/~mgilens/Gilens%20homepage%20materi...

Yes, of course what you quote is true -- more resources favors large entities and corporations. Similarly for example, the rich versus poor when appearing before the legal system. That is a deep problem of democracy + capitalism.

But if the desire is to reduce the influence of money in politics and the weight of corporations in our lives, that is something for Congress and our laws to be modified to do. Similarly to decide to tax, redistribute, or equalize the playing field between rich or poor. You would not have a court decide what tax policy to enact, or what the thresholds of welfare or social security brackets are. Courts are to resolve concrete disputes between individual parties using principles derived from the law, not promulgate new laws.

Courts have to treat people and entities coming before them in cases as equal parties, based on their arguments and evidence. If the side of corporations have more resources to pursue cases, hire lawyers, and fabricate evidence, etc. than individuals, then that's something for Congress and laws to fix. Courts are not here to somehow say that when there's a dispute, individual people's arguments take precedence over a corporation's when the law is clear about enumerated rights or regulations. Or to say a general policy principle like "people's rights trump corporations' rights". That is not a justiciable statement.

The relative rights of people versus corporations is where laws should lay out those definitions, in the places and applications where the theoretical becomes the real. Not for courts to create novel rights that are not subject to the democratic process and checks/balances on such important questions. Or if they're not specified in the Constitution.

No they don’t say that. Your assumption says more about you.

I 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.

Back 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.

I 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).

Does 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?

My 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.

What it means is abusing chevron deference to make law isn’t going to work anymore. Such sweeping changes need to be passed through Congress.

California'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.

Ah, 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/18-10...

This 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.

Do not confuse silence with absence. Also, that weird-looking fella in the corner with the bits and vectors sticking out is not really representative.

This site doesn't lean further right. It leans exactly the same way it always did.

The left moved further left.

Out 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?

Net 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.

As 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.

I wouldn't count on true competition to last.

Big 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.

Similarly 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

Not 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.

We 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.

“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

It'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.

I wonder how many people remember the propaganda of Google and Reddit logos loading low resolution versions slowly around peak dooming?

thanks for the good memory! i'd almost completely forgotten about that

I 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.

2024 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.

10 years of very effective republican propaganda has convinced people that whatever republicans do is good

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