US Court Blocks Biden Administration Net Neutrality Rules (ksl.com) 103
schwit1 writes: A U.S. appeals court on Thursday blocked the Federal Communications Commission's reinstatement of landmark net neutrality rules, saying broadband providers are likely to succeed in a legal challenge. The agency voted in April along party lines to reassume regulatory oversight of broadband internet and reinstate open internet rules adopted in 2015 that were rescinded under then-President Donald Trump.
The Sixth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, which had temporarily delayed the rules, said on Thursday it would temporarily block net neutrality rules and scheduled oral arguments for late October or early November on the issue, dealing a serious blow to President Joe Biden's effort to reinstate the rules. "The final rule implicates a major question, and the commission has failed to satisfy the high bar for imposing such regulations," the court wrote. "Net neutrality is likely a major question requiring clear congressional authorization."
The Sixth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, which had temporarily delayed the rules, said on Thursday it would temporarily block net neutrality rules and scheduled oral arguments for late October or early November on the issue, dealing a serious blow to President Joe Biden's effort to reinstate the rules. "The final rule implicates a major question, and the commission has failed to satisfy the high bar for imposing such regulations," the court wrote. "Net neutrality is likely a major question requiring clear congressional authorization."
With this Supreme Court they're right (Score:2, Insightful)
And no, we don't need a law from Congress. The FCC has had the authority to result this under both existing statues and the obvious interstate commerce clause since the Internet became a thing. The courts will have to tie themselves in knots to rule in favor of the corporations, but have you seen "Justice" Tho
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While I can seem "some" valid arguments about potential corruption...with the gifts and trips and stuff.....WTF is corrupt here?
This is going back to the basics of how the US is supposed to run.
Being that you are foreign, I try to give you a bit of a break in that you don't understand, but after awhile, it gets
Re:With this Supreme Court they're right (Score:4)
+1 the specific legal question appears pretty clear cut. (though it's "U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit" decision rather than scotus right now)
A good synopsis of the court opinion (which itself runs through the relevant legal history of the issue)
https://reason.com/volokh/2024... [reason.com]
the Title 2 attempt was always a stretch and without Chevron it's extra dead.
Jeez, where do I start? (Score:3, Insightful)
Dobbs was especially terrible. They cited a witchfinder general from the 1600s in the ruling. This may shock you, but the 1600s was a wee bit before the US constitution...
Oh, and there's that absolutely batshit Immunity ruling. They've basically declared Trump our weird King. All he needs to do is use Project 2025 to replace anyone who would stop him and he can literally ord
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I admit to not having read the initial "Major Questions" decision, but I'd think there's a potential simpler argument here.
This policy, with it's reversal and re-reversal, feels as it should violate the Administrative Procedures Act, "arbitrary and capricious" rule.
Re:With this Supreme Court they're right (Score:4, Interesting)
Let me try and understand this. Since this is the FCC and the supreme court says they lack the authority to actually enforce anything does that mean if a transmitter tower is operating incorrectly and spewing harmonics into the wrong band, congress now has to debate and pass a law in order for the tower to be fixed?
Re: With this Supreme Court they're right (Score:5, Insightful)
If the person running the tower can afford the legal battle..
At this point you could probably start storing nuclear waste at daycare centers and tell the EPA they don't have to right to trample your freedom.
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It's no longer able to pass even the most basic laws without an instant judicial battle between people who don't want toxic waste dumped all over them and their homes VS. some jackass with money who thinks everyone else should take his dick and be grateful for it.
The real question at this point is: "What happens next?" To be frank, probably a watering of the tree of liberty. You just can't fix these kinds of issues without bloodshed in any re
Yep (Score:2)
It's also possible that a political appointee judge will rule against the corporation but I wouldn't hold my breath for that unless you're maybe trying to breathe some of that "Freedom Air" there is selling.
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The Supreme Court hasn't said any such thing. All the Supreme Court has said is that they have to enforce what the law says, and not just make things up on their own if the law doesn't say what they want. The problem is that in reality, that's pretty much what the FCC has been doing with ISPs for years.
The law tries to make a clean delineation:
Re: With this Supreme Court they're right (Score:2)
"All the Supreme Court has said is that they have to enforce what the law says"
The law says the FCC has the authority to make and enforce regulations, so that's horse shit. That's literally what they were invented for.
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I don't believe the FCC mandates stated it could "make regulations"...ie new laws in areas other than by legal writ.
Enforce...yes, create/make...no.
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They want to continue to hold ISPs responsible for user's content
How is the FCC doing that?
Once they've made their choice, the FCC makes sure the abide by the consequences of that decision (e.g., if they decide to be a common carrier, they can't be held responsible for users' content, but they also can't provide or control content).
The FCC would never state "Comcast, you're a common carrier, Google you're not". They would set rules for what qualifies an entity as a common carrier, like with all regulations.
Not "openly corrupt". Openly BIASED. (Score:2)
. . . which is actually worse than what you said. Corruption can be detected, usually just a matter of following the money. Bias and prejudice "baked into" our judicial system is a far subtler problem to detect and correct. I don't know if his effort can succeed under current circumstances, but I think we should collectively applaud the attempt.
Incidentally, a law from Congress is exactly what we need. Letting nine people with absolutely no fashion sense decide things like Net Neutrality is as stupid a
Probably the right decision. (Score:5, Insightful)
As much as I would love to see net neutrality - and I'd even go further to declaring internet service to be common carriers and subject to the same rules as DSL / phone providers, this really is something Congress should sort out, rather than it flipping back and forth at the whims of whichever bum got elected President.
We need an open internet, but we also need market stability.
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congress is so broken at this point...
We broke it ourselves. Let's hold off on the bellyaching until we fix it and stop reelecting them all. Or is that asking too much?
Who else you gonna vote for? To be a successful politician you have to be owned by some special interests or another. Without that money you just can't compete. No money = not enough votes to matter.
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The government will always represent the voters' wishes.
Then what was the problem again?
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Yes, I more than get it that the way our system is designed, compromises must be made and no one is going to agree with all of the laws passed, but regardless we are bound by them.
I never said, "You want the court and the pres
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Well, we can start by trying to vote everyone out that is ingrained, embedded.....hell, let's push our congress critters to enact t
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I would send the GOP a long e-mail outlining my views on this subject. But unfortunately, they have not paid my ISPs access surcharges and messages and donations are unable to reach them.
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Yes, we need LLU [wikipedia.org] and real competition, not toothless net neutrality regulations that don't even apply to wireless. I'd support real net neutrality law (which should be simple and without loopholes for prioritization and such), but it shouldn't be left to the whims of non-elected agency officials.
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As much as I would love to see net neutrality - and I'd even go further to declaring internet service to be common carriers and subject to the same rules as DSL / phone providers
DSL providers were never common carriers. They were required to license the lines to other carriers, but that's unrelated.
And common carriers for networking would be very bad. Common carrier rules would prevent any sort of traffic shaping, which means my massive ping flood is as important as your livestream uplink. The law should require that an ISP provide comparable service quality (bandwidth, jitter, and latency) at least as far as the first peer outside its network, regardless of the destination, and
Re: Probably the right decision. (Score:2)
People who are not in the business and have not been exposed to traffic engineering do not understand the realities of the internet.
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Common carrier rules would prevent any sort of traffic shaping...
Exactly.. a dumb pipe, metered by the megabit/hour.
You can buy that. It will cost you anywhere from $130 to $300 per megabit, but you can buy that. Gigabit service? O($100,000) per month.
That cost is, of course, completely impractical for pretty much everyone, including small businesses. That's why people buy service from ISPs that buy bulk bandwidth and share it across a large pool of users. You aren't likely to need the full bandwidth 24x7, but if you average people's use over a million users, the lines can provide reasonable service at prices that p
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It just isn't feasible.
Standard bankers' excuse in a society run by the financial industry. It just won't generate the mega profits that you demand for said service.
Not at all. There are about 5.1 *billion* Internet users in the world. There are 100 million servers in the world. To guarantee that each user can hit any of those 100 million servers with a fixed amount of bandwidth without sharing bandwidth with anyone else would require 100 million * 5.1 billion * desired bandwidth. For one megabit, the cost would be $7.65 x 10^19 per month. That is over 9 *million* times the entire world's GDP.
If you assume that the average length of each of those dedicated lines i
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If you want to see net neutrality, then the Net Neutrality bills are not it.
Are you not paying attention, or have you never heard of things like the Patriot Act and other similarly-named con jobs, which do the opposite of what they propose?
Net Neutrality has always been about regulatory capture, nothing more.
Let red states have shitgopolies (Score:1)
Hopefully blue states can implement some form of it state-wide without the Court inventing reasons to stop it.
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1st amendment isn't about anti-trust. If you own both the pipes and the water, you price away competition.
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Oh, Did you try to actually use the power of the state to enforce a law we don't like? Quick! Big Daddy Fed! Make a law to banish those foolish wrongs of the other states!
Oh, Did you try to actually use the power of local county / city government to enforce a law we don't like? Lol, like we give a shit about what the proles want, here's a state law that forbids your laws from being effective! HAHAHAHA!
net neutrality (Score:1)
Legislating from the bench (Score:5, Insightful)
No it doesn't. It's very simple: you can't give preference to one stream of data over another. How difficult is that to understand?
"Net neutrality is likely a major question requiring clear congressional authorization."
The FCC already has Congressional authorization [congress.gov]:
The FCC operates under a public interest mandate first laid out in the 1927 Radio Act (P.L. 632, 69th Congress), but how this mandate is applied depends on how âoethe public interestâ is interpreted. Some regulators seek to protect and benefit the public at large through regulation, while others seek to achieve the same goals through the promotion of market efficiency. Additionally, Congress granted the FCC wide latitude and flexibility to revise its interpretation of the public interest standard to reflect changing circumstances and the agency has not defined it in more concrete terms. These circumstances, paired with changes in FCC leadership, have led to significant changes over time in how the FCC regulates the broadcast and telecommunications industries.
Do people not read any more? This is like that moron throwing out the classified documents case claiming an invalid appointment of the special counsel. Apparently they couldn't be bothered to read the federal code [cornell.edu] on the matter. Or, as the Attorney General said [cnn.com]:
Do I look like somebody who would make that basic mistake about the law? I don't think so.
Til now, every single court, including the Supreme Court, that has considered the legality of special counsel appointment has upheld it.
Clearly the judges on the Appeals Court are just legislating from the bench rather than reading what the FCC mandate is as given by Congress.
Re:Legislating from the bench (Score:5, Interesting)
"The final rule implicates a major question, and the commission has failed to satisfy the high bar for imposing such regulations, No it doesn't. It's very simple: you can't give preference to one stream of data over another. How difficult is that to understand?
It does when you conflate it with Quality of Service dictating bandwidth needs, which is what many people do. Video conferencing requires a high rate in both directions. Video streaming or downloading major software installers requires a high download rate. Browsing the web requires low rates most of the time and will need some burst speeds here and there to acquire some content. Those are basic needs to provide proper QoS for the services requested.
As long as the endpoints are effectively anonymous, then you meet what is needed. If, however, I choose to pay for expanded services because I do a lot of video conferencing, that's on me... not on federal regulators. If Comcast (example) elects to speed up their VOD services within their own network, that's on them... not on federal regulators. If Comcast (example) purposely decides to slow down direct connections to Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+, etc, that becomes an anti-competitive practice and is certainly already within the realm for federal regulators to hand out penalties.
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"The final rule implicates a major question, and the commission has failed to satisfy the high bar for imposing such regulations, No it doesn't. It's very simple: you can't give preference to one stream of data over another. How difficult is that to understand?
It does when you conflate it with Quality of Service dictating bandwidth needs, which is what many people do. Video conferencing requires a high rate in both directions. Video streaming or downloading major software installers requires a high download rate. Browsing the web requires low rates most of the time and will need some burst speeds here and there to acquire some content. Those are basic needs to provide proper QoS for the services requested.
The rules should still be simple. You can't give preference to one stream of data over another stream of data that has the same quality-of-service class or equivalent.
As long as the endpoints are effectively anonymous, then you meet what is needed. If, however, I choose to pay for expanded services because I do a lot of video conferencing, that's on me... not on federal regulators. If Comcast (example) elects to speed up their VOD services within their own network, that's on them... not on federal regulators.
Comcast is within the margin of error of being a monopoly in most of the markets in which it operates. If Comcast speeds up their VoD services while effectively throttling Netflix because their peering point is overloaded, that's unfair competition, and should be prosecuted quickly and decisively. Nor should Comcast be allowed to throttle N
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If Comcast (example) purposely decides to slow down direct connections to Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+, etc, that becomes an anti-competitive practice and is certainly already within the realm for federal regulators to hand out penalties.
It sounds like you think business competition is the only thing that should be protected on the Internet. What are regular customers supposed to do when the consumer protection agencies are fully gutted and they want to do something that does *not* require sending money to a corporation?
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What they can do is vote differently, hopefully based on facts instead of BS. So that those consumer protection agencies and regs don't get gutted.
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If Comcast (example) elects to speed up their VOD services within their own network, that's on them... not on federal regulators.
Speak English bro. What you said is nonsense. Networks work at max speed all the time. There is no "speeding up" of any stream, there is only the slowing down of other streams.
Re:Legislating from the bench (Score:5, Insightful)
"Legislating from the bench" is what you call a court ruling that goes against what your political party wants. Republicans have been yelling about this for years. Democrats are now starting to catch on.
If Congress would start, you know, *legislating,* court rulings like this could be easily undone, where thy should be, by Congress. Instead, both sides are so busy yelling at the other side about their pet peeves, that they are paralyzed, giving the courts way too much power.
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If Congress would start, you know, *legislating,* court rulings like this could be easily undone,
You are dead wrong sir. Human languages are designed such that they are fully incapable of specifying anything with enough specificity that there will be no further questions. In other words, it is literally impossible for what you want to occur. It absolutely *IS* a nice idea though... it belongs in the Sci-Fi/Fantasy realm.
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I think what you are suggesting, is that it's impossible for legislators to anticipate every future nuance of the wording of the laws they crat. If that's your point, then I agree with you, but it doesn't negate my point in any way.
What I meant when I said that "court rulings like this could be easily undone" is that, after a court interprets the law in such a way that the interpretation conflicts with the actual will of Congress, Congress could easily pass a clarifying law to undo the court's "misinterpret
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I think what you are suggesting, is that it's impossible for legislators to anticipate every future nuance of the wording of the laws they crat. If that's your point, then I agree with you, but it doesn't negate my point in any way.
I was not saying that nor was I trying to invalidate your point. Your point might get invalidated...
What I am saying is that words are fluid in definition. Look at the 2nd Amendment. Initial reading says that it should be interpreted the exact way it was written, and yet people are still trying, and sometimes succeeding, in redefining what EXACTLY was meant with those words.
In other words, your proposal only works if everyone has honest intentions. "Give me six lines written by the most honest of men and I
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Fine, so people, even judges, can intentionally misinterpret laws. How does that negate the ability of Congress to clarify them? Whatever the original words meant isn't what's important. What's important is that Congress has the ability to redefine those words if they choose to, it's literally their job to update laws as needed. Sticking to the original intent is not important for Congress, it can modify laws by providing NEW intent.
For the courts, sticking with the original intent is more important. They d
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Re:Legislating from the bench (Score:4, Interesting)
The recent supreme court decision was part of a long game to undermine the authority of regulatory agencies. These agencies are nothing but a thorn in the side of private industry and large corporations. Take the EPA for example, created and signed into law by Richard Nixon in 1972. Now suddenly the EPA powers are too broad and must be reigned in. Instead of the EPA and the knowledge of scientists and experts who work for it we have to get congress involved to debate on whether mercury and leaded gasoline are toxic. Congress, as in the "series of tubes" guy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] or the human thumb masquerading as a woman who shows dick pics to congress during IRS hearings. https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com]
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Clearly the judges on the Appeals Court are just legislating from the bench rather than reading what the FCC mandate is as given by Congress.
So what? Legislating from the bench appears to be very effective and, apparently, there is nothing that can be done about it. Have fun, it is going to be a WILD ride. :)
Another casualty of Loper Bright (Score:3)
Before all the nerds get pissed about this, keep in mind that this will affect the next president as well, which is very likely to be Trump. That dud and his posse have a ton of super-bad ideas on how to run the country, and they're gonna get blocked at every step by the courts.
Loper Bright made the potus a MUCH weaker position, at least as far as domestic policy is concerned.
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A major point of having agencies within the executive branch is that they hire employees who understand a particular industry very well and can create regulations that will prevent c
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Before all the nerds get pissed about this, keep in mind that this will affect the next president as well
You still believe in "right and wrong". You still think anybody cares about right and wrong. What you don't seem to realize is that the definition of right and wrong depends on who is judging and who is being judged. So one president could get away with murder and numerous other crimes while another president gets analyzed deeply for handling of classified documents while trying to honestly do their job. It all depends on who controls the 'story'.
Most of us have no idea at all at how fucked we are as a nati
Maybe not the issue it once was (Score:2)
When Net Neutrality was conceived, bandwidth was way, way lower. It really mattered whether one type of connection got priority over another. These days, speeds are so fast that, in general, everything can get through, (nearly) all the time. Maybe we can now move on to more important issues?
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No, because without this Net Neutrality your Netflix will only stream at 720p, while your ISP's service will stream at 8K.
Your federated XMPP video chats will experience packet drops, while well known expensive (or ad-ridden) solutions will work fine.
Your indie online game will experience lag, while games going through EA/Steam will work fine.
This will also allow pricing data "per service" : limited to 100GB/month, for $5 extra monthly Spotify/Netflix doesn't count in that balance.
Don't put it past ISPs to
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I'm not so sure that ISPs will be quick to "degrade" service. They know that customers expect that fast connection to be...fast. If Netflix streams at 720p, the customer won't complain to Netflix, they'll complain to the ISP. And complaining customers are more likely to jump ship, especially now that customers have more options, such as a fiber service or 5G home internet. The higher the promised speeds, the less tolerant customers will be, of bandwidth issues.
So far, the main things ISPs have done, is remo
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It wasn't too long ago when it was happening, a
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You've got a point about cellular internet, which hasn't yet reached speeds and capacity rivaling cable or fiber internet. As bandwidth improves with each new generation, I predict these kinds of restrictions will go away, with or without the law.
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I'm not so sure that ISPs will be quick to "degrade" service. They know that customers expect that fast connection to be...fast. If Netflix streams at 720p, the customer won't complain to Netflix, they'll complain to the ISP.
And the ISP will roll their eyes, because what are you going to do, use satellite Internet?
I already have frequent periods of multi-second outages doing video conferencing for work, and that's *without* any clear competitive motive, and with business-class cable service. They're more than happy to degrade service right up to the point where federal regulators start throwing around phrases like "unfair competition" and "antitrust breakup", and they've demonstrated that willingness often enough to make that
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Hanlon's razor applies to your situation: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
There is no clear connection to your "multi-second outages" to the lack of net neutrality.
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Hanlon's razor applies to your situation: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
There is no clear connection to your "multi-second outages" to the lack of net neutrality.
I didn't say there was (though it can't be ruled out). What I said was my issues are evidence that ISPs don't have a good reason to care, because they pretty much have a monopoly, and there's even more reason for them to not care when they are throttling a competitor unless the government takes action.
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That's the thing, their monopoly is eroding. I now have three choices for home internet: XFinity, AT&T, Ezee Fiber, plus 3 cell carriers that offer 5G home internet. And Cellular internet is becoming more and more generous. My $30 a month AT&T plan, and my wife's $20 a month Boost Mobile plan, both come with 30 GB at 5G speeds. Cellular internet isn't yet where home internet is, but it's getting there quickly. Just a couple of years ago, our plans each only offered 5 GB at full speed.
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more options
This is what will fix the problem, as well as most other problems with ISPs. We really need regulations to promote competition.
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100% agree.
Ubiquitous internet is too important for everyone (Score:3)
Traffic shaping is like nuclear power. (Score:2)
(Scott Adams, Dilbert)
Seriously, traffic shaping is absolutely the only way ISP's will be able to keep up with demand. Used perfectly, none of the customers would even guess that there was any traffic shaping taking place, and all will enjoy the fastest, most robust internetwork connection possible. Used maliciously, the balkanization of the internet will happen virtually overnight. Used negligently (the most likely option), both wil
Federal Agencies (Score:2)
I suppose the gist of the matter here is the fact that the Supreme Court has decided that Federal Agencies are starting to push the boundaries of what they were created to do beyond merely enforcing the existing laws enacted by Congress.
While they are typically allowed to enforce existing law, many of them are blurring the lines a bit by trying to " reinterpret " said laws or even trying to change them altogether.
The most blatant examples would be the BATF trying to reinterpret the official definition of a
A Link To The Actual Court Ruling PDF (Score:2)
It starts off with a very interesting history summary showing how the FCC has ping-ponged on the Net Neutrality issue and seemingly in response to Court rulings that are cited in this Stay Order. The links in TFS are useless since they do not show you the actual Court Stay Order.
https://static.foxbusiness.com... [foxbusiness.com]
Major Questions Doctrine right wing corporate bunk (Score:2)
"major questions" is a magic phrase to look for these days. In new laws and bills Congress keeps adding "Major questions doctrine does not apply to this provision". this is a power grab by the judicial branch. It doesn't come from any law passed by Congress at all.
What does this mean? For totally unspecified reasons -- no particular boundary or edge, a hand wave about “vast economic and political significance” and nothing can be determined in the executive branch agency regulations. It is unfals
Who cares?! (Score:1)
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Maybe he can try working with Congress some time to actually pass laws.
Anybody, literally anybody, would work with Congress if Congress had any chance of passing anything or being more than an ineffectual lump of shit.
But, that is not the case. Congress cannot pass substantive legislation, as proved by 30 years of deadlock and indecision, half-measures and fighting.
Biden has foes, no doubt about it. Some are snakes (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe he can try working with Congress some time to actually pass laws.
Anybody, literally anybody, would work with Congress if Congress had any chance of passing anything or being more than an ineffectual lump of shit.
But, that is not the case. Congress cannot pass substantive legislation, as proved by 30 years of deadlock and indecision, half-measures and fighting.
Two Democrat foes in particular: Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema. Both bought and paid for by corporate interests.
Kyrsten Sinema sold out her constituents [youtube.com] and career to 'retire ever after' to enjoy her splendid high maintenance life standards, once her term ends soon. Joe Manchin is equally corrupt to serve and vote while maintaining his own coal invested wealth. Had it not been for these two highly corrupt 'Democrats', Joe Biden's tenure would have been far, far more impactful than it has been, and it has actually been very impactful.
If only we had more people in congress working for us and serving our best interests.
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"Two Democrat foes in particular: Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema"
Yeah great, get rid of those two and you'll have another pair of ghouls to take the spotlight. The problem with those two is that they represent the actual face of the democratic party, behind the rainbow paint and BLM yard signs. But let'a all continue wasting our time pretending there isn't a uniparty.
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That's not to say he isn't corrupt, the default assumption is that all politicians are corrupt. That's especially true by your metric of "takes corporate donations." Find me a congressman in your preferred party who doesn't.
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NAK
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Is there any way back to nonpartisan Justices?
What are the possible solutions? Repeal the nuclear option to allow filibusters, which essentially sets the confirmation threshold at 60 instead of 50+1. Or simply require a supermajority vote outright. This could be done with a Senate rule and doesn't require a Constitutional change, since the Constitution only requires an unspecified "advice and consent." Of course, this doesn't really help, since the Senate rules can be changed at any time, and the party in power has every motivation to minimize the
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Thoughtful reply, but it sounds like you should review the history. Here's my recap, though it also involves my interpretations and therefore you should look at the data yourself and see if you agree. The short version is just the list of SCOTUS nominations on Wikipedia, which includes the results. There are also various books on the history of the Supreme Court. Perhaps we should compare notes on which ones we've read?
Short summary is that not so long ago every Justice was nonpartisan under the definition
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The Constitution specifies "advice and consent"; it doesn't say there have to be hearings.
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And a bit thanks to the censor troll moderators for letting me know I'm on the right track. Exactly which aspects scare you so much? That's the only bit that catches my attention.
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s/bit thanks/big thanks/