Groups Ask US Court To Reconsider Ruling Blocking Net Neutrality Rules (reuters.com) 65
Public interest groups on Tuesday asked the full 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to reconsider a ruling that the Federal Communications Commission lacked legal authority to reinstate landmark net neutrality rules. From a report: The decision by a three-judge panel blocked the FCC under then President Joe Biden that had sought to reinstate the open internet rules implemented in 2015 but later repealed by the agency under President Donald Trump. The groups -- Free Press, Public Knowledge, Open Technology Institute and the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society -- argue the appeals court decision conflicts with an earlier decision by another court.
The groups said the case centers on the FCC's decades-long effort to prevent broadband internet providers "from abusing their gatekeeping power, in furtherance of the providers' economic or political interests, to constrain their users' access to third-party websites."
The groups said the case centers on the FCC's decades-long effort to prevent broadband internet providers "from abusing their gatekeeping power, in furtherance of the providers' economic or political interests, to constrain their users' access to third-party websites."
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Re:Complete waste of time (Score:4, Insightful)
the trans thing seems like bs to me. it seems like a bogus attack on a minority, but a large majority seemed to have bought into it.
That's the deeper motive behind it, but superficially these sort of things are done as easy wins for the party in power. Nothing fundamentally changes, but the politicians get to say they've accomplished a part of their agenda. It's why net neutrality has flipped a few times. I'm surprised they haven't done it yet for extinct birds.
Picture a right-wing politician giving a press conference:
"Folks, I’m here today to warn you about a looming crisis the liberal elite doesn’t want you to know about. Scientists, funded by woke billionaires, are actively working to bring back the dodo bird. Now, I don’t know about you, but I like my neighborhood dodo-free. Once these birds are back, they’ll be everywhere - blocking roads, stealing our crops, and yes, pooping on every truck in America. That’s why I’m introducing the No Dodo Act, banning the reintroduction of these filthy creatures before they even hatch. We must protect our nation from unnecessary birds!"
And of course, social media would have a field day. There’d be memes like "Make America Dodo-Free Again", AM talk show hosts would argue whether dodos are a liberal conspiracy, and someone would start selling anti-dodo bumper stickers. Meanwhile, no scientist was ever genuinely planning to bring back the dodo in the first place.
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Oh would you and rsilvergun quit posting in loops the same crap over and over again? It has become quite boring and such a nuisance here! You guys are worse than spammers and you are destroying this site with your spam like posts.
For example:
"All told 7 million people tried to vote last year and couldn't and it doesn't take a PhD in political science to figure out what kind of politician they would have voted for. "
Here a very limited subset of how many times he has posted the exact same here in a loop, it'
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Yeah guys, stop posting the truth and facts. It's really annoying me and I don't want to acknowledge it.
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the trans thing seems like bs to me. it seems like a bogus attack on a minority, but a large majority seemed to have bought into it.
That's the deeper motive behind it, but superficially these sort of things are done as easy wins for the party in power. Nothing fundamentally changes, but the politicians get to say they've accomplished a part of their agenda. It's why net neutrality has flipped a few times. I'm surprised they haven't done it yet for extinct birds.
Picture a right-wing politician giving a press conference:
"Folks, I’m here today to warn you about a looming crisis the liberal elite doesn’t want you to know about. Scientists, funded by woke billionaires, are actively working to bring back the dodo bird. Now, I don’t know about you, but I like my neighborhood dodo-free. Once these birds are back, they’ll be everywhere - blocking roads, stealing our crops, and yes, pooping on every truck in America. That’s why I’m introducing the No Dodo Act, banning the reintroduction of these filthy creatures before they even hatch. We must protect our nation from unnecessary birds!"
And of course, social media would have a field day. There’d be memes like "Make America Dodo-Free Again", AM talk show hosts would argue whether dodos are a liberal conspiracy, and someone would start selling anti-dodo bumper stickers. Meanwhile, no scientist was ever genuinely planning to bring back the dodo in the first place.
*COUGH* [scientificamerican.com]
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Easy win is to pick a bogeyman that you have a good chance to get your potential voters riled up about. Trans fits that mold. They don't know many of them, so it won't hurt their close relatives, easy peasy. Does nothing to solve any problem in the world, but it gets the voters out to the polls.
Interesting to hear an interview with some Wisconsin dairy farmers, pro Trump, who assume that the undocumented workers to be deported will be from other states, but that they'll keep their own undocumented workers
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Interesting to hear an interview with some Wisconsin dairy farmers, pro Trump, who assume that the undocumented workers to be deported will be from other states, but that they'll keep their own undocumented workers who keep the dairy business running. What struck me was the attitude that they assumed only other people would get hurt but now they realize it might backfire on them.
Really is "I didn't expect the leopards to eat MY face".
It was the same with Brexit too. A lot if it was sold on borders, and many
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Re:Complete waste of time (Score:4, Insightful)
"After an entire decade without it, net neutrality has proven to just be one of the left's potential boogeyman issues, like how here in Florida the right worried about kids being "trans'ed" in schools, even though that wasn't actually happening."
No one's going to agree with you simply because you equate one thing with another. You have absolutely no idea whether net neutrality is an issue or not, you wouldn't know how net traffic might be affected, meanwhile we know kids aren't having the sex changed in schools.
"...but it's always going to take a back burner to real "dinner table" issues, like the cost of groceries or empty shelves where the cartons of eggs should be."
Sure, because one side is always creating the "dinner table" issues. Culture wars work great as long as we let them, that sounds great to you.
"...dealing with net neutrality's absence is just going to be a bridge that we'll have to cross when (or even if, as I said - the sky hasn't fallen after a decade without it) we get to it."
If rape is inevitable, you might as well lay back and enjoy it.
Re:Complete waste of time (Score:5, Informative)
>Presumably you get a bill from your ISP, correct? It should be fairly obvious if you're paying extra for "fast lane" access to specific sites.
Not necessarily, because you are not the one who would be getting extorted. From an end user's point of view, the only effect would be a service or website is annoyingly slow or unreliable.
The quintessential example is AT&T getting Apple and Google to degrade VoIP service quality because it allowed users to place phone calls without using AT&T's phone service (and getting billed accordingly). They tried doing the same to early video conferencing apps because it allowed people to do video calls without paying extra for their own video call service.
There was also Telus, a Canadian ISP, that was caught throttling traffic specifically to a website supporting a labor strike against them. This one is particularly chilling because the idea that your internet provider can basically make any data they want - or any data the government wants - inaccessible is absolutely possible without network neutrality. They don't have to take the site down, just make it take a reeeeeealy long time to load and maybe the occasional 503 to make it frustrating enough that people give up.
Multiple ISPs have been caught redirecting search queries and typo'd URLs through their own, or their partnered, web services. This is directly tampering with your internet traffic and what you get to see for their own benefit.
Comcast has been caught injecting javascript into web pages delivered to its customers to display ads. Other than tampering with user traffic, it was a major security problem too of course.
And it was barely ten years ago that Netflix - and only Netflix - was experiencing nation-wide traffic issues that were independently verified to be the result of intentional and targeted policies of not performing routine upgrades in specific areas to hinder competition to their own streaming platforms (which of course enjoyed perfect reliability.)
The threats of not having Net Neutrality are not theoretical. These are not "potential boogeyman issues." They are very real problems that we have already had to deal with and will very obviously get worse without any controls in place... ISPs have every incentive to fuck with traffic for their own benefit. They've done it, have been doing it, and will continue to do it.
=Smidge=
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You're basically laboring under the delusion that the big tech broligarchy hasn't already enshittified the internet to the point where things can't get much worse. I've said it before, once Musk dropped $44 billion to purchase Twitter's userbase, it was clear that the era of the old internet was over. There isn't a level playing field left to protect with net neutrality. The game is now purely pay-to-win, and if it comes down to Musk, Zuck and their ilk having to cough up some of their massive wealth pil
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So just to make sure I have this right...
Net neutrality is simultaneously a "potential boogeyman issue" but also big tech has already gotten entrenched and will continue to abuse their monopoly powers?
I don't see how both of these can be true at the same time.
> There isn't a level playing field left to protect with net neutrality.
Net neutrality is what creates the level playing field, dingus. You're basically saying it's too late to call the fire department because the house is already on fire; not under
Re: Complete waste of time (Score:2)
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Exposing Trans Ideology & Grooming in Schools [youtube.com] (46:47)
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Exposing Trans Ideology & Grooming in Schools [youtube.com] (46:47)
You're seriously going to cite a 3/4 hour long LibsOfTikTok propaganda video (oddly, sponsored by Magic Spoon, a cereal created by two "roommates" [magicspoon.com]) as a source?
I think you missed the Florida part. This state is already heavily conservative and there wasn't much of an issue with so-called woke liberal teachers trying to push an agenda. Maybe it's an issue in places like California, but worrying about California's "problems" in Florida is pretty silly. It'd be like passing a law saying you're required to f
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“The public school system, in my view, is not a salvageable institution. If you're sending your kids into that system—and I know that some parents have to, they have no choice — and I totally understand that, but if you have any option, don't send your kid in. It can't be saved, not anytime soon. And if it can be, you can't send your kid in to be the one who saves it, because he can't.
That's asking too much of your kid — s
I don't know what timeline you're in (Score:3)
They are now. In control of the courts that is. They're in control of everything. A handful of mega corporations have absolute power over every aspect of your life now and you handed it to them on a s
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I'm not going to ask you what you got in exchange but I am curious, Was it worth it?
I don't get anything out of it. I'm merely pointing out that the loss of net neutrality turned out to mostly be a windmill rather than an actual monster. Take X (Twitter) for example, it turned into a right-wing cesspool after Musk bought it and we're not experiencing the predicted doomsday scenario of X's competitors being unable to pay for a "fast lane". You absolutely can leave X for greener pastures without any sort of speed penalty, it merely comes down to willingness to participate in a significant
You're still not getting it (Score:1)
It's typical boomer behavior. Like the old joke about libertarians and cats.
And no I don't care how old you are. Once a boomer, always a boomer.
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NN didn't go away. Companies still enforced it because they weren't sure of the legal landscape and didn't want to risk a legal mess.
What you're basically saying is that you believe the Democrats will never be in power again, so telcos have no reason to fear NN ever being reinstated. Well, guess what - if that happens there's far worse problems to worry about than Netflix being slow unless you pay up.
I doubt very much that businesses are going to implement policies they just know they'll have to reverse when a Democrat gets into office. It would be like if GM decided to scrap all their EV production just because Trump won (hint: they d
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Yea ok I'll bite. ... except hey BMW tried making heated seats (listed as an included option in that car) as a subscription.
So we shouldn't have laws that says car sales should never include a subscription for the basics of what we consider cars. Since no one is doing it.
So since they are not doing it we don't need a law. Until they do. I remember when you could purchase MS Office. For years MS tried to move their products into subscriptions. It was pushed back, until it wasn't. If only there had a been a l
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After an entire decade without it, net neutrality has proven to just be one of the left's potential boogeyman issues, like how here in Florida the right worried about kids being "trans'ed" in schools, even though that wasn't actually happening. It's something bad we can imagine might happen while some evil dude in his volcano lair laughs maniacally about his fiendish plot to make people pay extra to access Netflix, but so far that's not been the case.
I mean, sure, except two fundamental differences:
1} Nobody wants to turn anyone's kids trans. And even if they did, it doesn't work.
2} ISPs have already expressed that they want to bill both ends. And when allowed, it will drive consumer prices up.
What I'm saying is that other than one threat being made-up and irrelevant and the other having precedent and clear consequence, the scenarios are very similar.
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Millions (Score:4, Insightful)
All told 7 million people tried to vote last year and couldn't and it doesn't take a PhD in political science to figure out what kind of politician they would have voted for.
Citation needed.
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He can't cite shit. He will ramble on about a couple anecdotes about long lines in a few deep blue cities, that have at least as many mirror image issues that happened in deep red strongholds.
We know what he really means he means that without fraud-by-mail voting it was impossible for people to pressure their family members to vote a certain way or out and out complete their ballots for them according to their own preferences. Its not that 7 million people could not vote, its they didn't because they eith
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"He can't cite shit."
He can cite you, that's an existence proof right there.
"He will ramble on about a couple anecdotes about long lines in a few deep blue cities, that have at least as many mirror image issues that happened in deep red strongholds."
BOTH SIDES!
"We know what he really means he means that without fraud-by-mail voting..."
You can't cite shit.
"ts not that 7 million people could not vote, its they didn't because they either did not want to (in which case their preferences don't matter) or they we
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Re: Millions (Score:2)
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Ah, the classic game of assuming your opponent also has the memory of a goldfish. So one more time, take a look at the 20 bellwether counties, Joe Biden won 1 out of 20. The previous low mark for taking the White House was 13. Look at the returns, those 2am stopped counts that magically resume with 95+% results for one candidate. Yep, no irregularities th
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You do understand how easy it is to catch voting by mail fraud correct?
I submit YOUR ballot by mail and vote for all democrats.
You show up to vote in person or by mail, and they say hey why did this person vote twice?
Hmmm.... doesn't sound like a good plan. Now you could find out that your whole street of 100 people don't vote. You could then vote "for" those people by mail or in person. No one would catch you and all of those 100 votes could change who was going to be president. (as if it would only take 1
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
The 1st is a journalist who accounts for around 3.5m denied voting rights through voter purges and the application of Jim Crow era laws. The 2nd covers that plus the impact of voter suppression tactics like bomb threats, broken voting machines, poll watchers and limited voting locations.
In total it's around 7m voters.
You're next. I'm sure Trump is doing things that you disagree with. But like he said, you'll never have to vote
Re: Millions (Score:2)
Stop spamming this site! (Score:1)
Stop spamming this site please, you keep posting the same thing in a loop, you should be banned for spamming.
https://slashdot.org/comments.... [slashdot.org]
https://slashdot.org/comments.... [slashdot.org]
https://slashdot.org/comments.... [slashdot.org]
https://slashdot.org/comments.... [slashdot.org]
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etc. etc. etc.
I mean there's solid evidence that Republican voter suppression prevented 7 million Americans from voting. That's a wide enough margin by far to have given Haris the win. If the Democrats had any backbone they'd be doing something about it right now but instead the dumbasses think they can get concessions out of the Republicans during budget negotiations.
You need to put climate change aside right now and focus on voting rights. We've got pretty good data that clearly indicates 7 million Americans were prevented from voting in 2024. About half of those couldn't vote because of things like Jim Crow style ballot challenges, voter purges and just plain making it difficult bordering on impossible to register to vote. The other half was your classic election day shenanigans like multi-hour wait times, poll watchers and bomb threats. If you're on the left wing and you have an issue that keeps you there what you need to be focusing on right now is voting rights. Nothing else matters.
If he had the political capital to kill the filibuster he would have had the political capital to protect our elections and Trump wouldn't have become president because the 7 million people Republicans stopped from voting would have voted Trump right on out.
Here in America 7 million people tried to vote last year and couldn't. I think that's really the only solution. Getting those people to the polls and stopping the tricks used to block them. I think people, at least enough people, can see through the bullshit but right now they're not being allowed to have their say.
he point is it didn't matter who they ran. What mattered was the Democrats didn't fight voter suppression so it didn't matter which candidate they ran because that candidate couldn't surmount a 7 million vote loss.
The Democrats could run Jesus fucking Christ and it wouldn't do any good if the Republicans just stop 7 million people from voting.. it literally doesn't matter how good a candidate they run. It doesn't matter what tricks they use or how they run the campaign or any of that. Nobody is going to surmount a 7 million loss of voters.
All told 7 million people were prevented from voting in 2024. It was the classic tricks. Making it hard to register, purging voter rolls and sending broken machines to districts that were likely to vote blue.
In 2024 7 million people tried to vote and couldn't. Trump didn't win voter suppression did. People were prevented from registering, purged when they did register and of course we had 7-hour wait times to vote in swing states and bomb threats called in to close polling locations.
Again elections have consequences and we made our choice. Well some of us did. Based on current research about 7 million Americans didn't get a chance to make a choice thanks to voter suppression.
Sophistry (Score:2)
The first is a Reddit post pointing journalist who doesn't cite any of his sources. Where is the data coming from?
The second is an interview with the same journalist being interviewed about the first article.
So you are getting 7 million voters being denied their right to vote by citing the same journalist, who says 3.5 million votes were suppressed, twice.
Let's dig in to the article just a bit. The first key piece of data, according to the article is that "4,776,706 voters were wrongly purged from voter rol
Waste of time for a Different Reason (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re: Complete waste of time (Score:2)
If you care about net neutrality you should be focusing on voting rights, ending voter suppression and dealing with the Jim Crow era laws that are currently being used to stop people from voting. All told 7 million people tried to vote last year and couldn't and it doesn't take a PhD in political science to figure out what kind of politician they would have voted for.
Some nutjobs wearing red hats made a similar argument four years ago. "What? My guy lost? That's impossible! I took a poll and everybody in my room voted for my guy!"
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You sound like the other side of the 2020 MAGA election denier coin.
Stop.
He's sworn in. There's nothing that can be done about that now. Stop looking backwards and start looking forward to see what can be done to derail this shit while that's still somewhat possible.
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You have a very interesting concept of an "audit" where they just go in and start firing people without knowing what they do, and if that's needed or not.
Among the people "audited" so far that were fired and now they're scrambling to re-hire them because they're doing this in the absolute stupidest way imagineable:
- people working for the National Nuclear Security Administration who design, maintain, and secure our nuclear weapons stockpile. Whoops, don't need them I guess! Oh wait, we do? Oh shit we hav
This is all about money. (Score:2, Interesting)
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Then they should go ahead and do that, and leave the rest of us out of it.
I like my money right where it is, thank you very much.
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NN, for those not old enough to remember (Score:3, Insightful)
If you need to explain Network Neutrality to a non-techie, here is my suggestion:
Back before the "internet" there were multiple online services. The "Big 3" were Prodigy, CompuServe, and America Online. At that time, a company like the Sears department store, would go to one or more of the big 3 and pay each one to setup an online presence. In TV commercials, one might hear "Find us with our AOL keyword SEARS" or "On Compuserve, type GO SEARS." A Prodigy user could only see services on Prodigy. A CompuServe user could not see services on America Online, etc.
The internet revolutionized this model by introducing "network neutrality." This principle means that anyone can make a web site, everyone can see it no matter who provides their internet service. Once people saw this, companies shifted from the Big 3 to creating their own web sites on the internet. Those services declined.
Today, telecom companies want to revert to the old model, where they are gatekeepers again and networks are segregated. Comcast users might not see the same thing as AT&T users or COX users. Companies like NetFlix, Disney, or Hulu would need to strike deals with Comcast, AT&T, COX, Charter, etc. to ensure everyone can use their services, and the services could vary in terms of content or quality. And users might need to pay special fees to access services that are out-of-network, similar to long-distance fees of old.
The internet *is* neutral and must remain that way. Allowing telecoms to change that is a 30-year step backward.
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Back before the "internet" there were multiple online services. The "Big 3" were Prodigy, CompuServe, and America Online. At that time, a company like the Sears department store, would go to one or more of the big 3 and pay each one to setup an online presence.
Bad example. Prodigy was OWNED by Sears.
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It's a solution to a problem we never had.
Wrong time. (Score:2)
This is not the time to press the courts into ruling against big business. Not only are you almost certainly going to fail, you set precedent. And while recently precedent has been ignored as desired by the courts, they'll happily seize on it in the future when it suits their purposes. You're not helping your case today and you are arming the future one against you.
What's the point? (Score:2)
Net neutrality is a solution to a problem we don't have. That means it is regulation for the sake of regulation, and that is just wasteful.