Net Neutrality Suffers Major Setback 790
RingDev writes "The US Court of Appeals ruled in favor of Comcast today, stating that the FCC lacks the authority to require broadband providers to give equal treatment to all Internet traffic flowing over their networks."
Oh goody (Score:3, Insightful)
A more accurate summary... (Score:1, Insightful)
... would be "The government's policy suffered a setback today". Not everyone agrees on what Net Neutrality even is, whether or not to support it as envisioned.
So... (Score:2, Insightful)
(possible lost profits from complying with net neutrality) > (potential financial benefits as proposed by FCC)? Are there some bargaining chips still on the table? Or is it just about "freedom of doing business how we want to"?
And yeah, I assume the "benefits" implied by the article -- funds for improving internet to rural areas -- are peanuts to comcast...
Re:Oh goody (Score:5, Insightful)
Did you hear that? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Oh goody (Score:0, Insightful)
Hello, this is $BIGCORP
You have agreed to be fucked up the ass.
Would you like:
A. To be fucked in the ass by a dildo made of fused broken glass OR
B. To be raped by each member of our billing department?
Please reply within 7 days.
Your humble servant,
$BIGCORP
No single US Court of Appeals (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:A more accurate summary... (Score:3, Insightful)
And the policy in question is "Net Neutrality"... so I fail to see how you offer a more accurate summary. All you've done is add an unnecessary level of abstraction.
Re:Oh goody (Score:1, Insightful)
There is no need for government regulation here - it would only benefit the existing ISPs at the expense of the consumer.
That's why big corporations welcome regulation. They know it's easier for a big corporation with legions of lawyers to comply with said regulations than it is for a small start up. They also have lobbyists working for them to ensure that the regulations are written in such a manner as to protect their existing business model.
ISPs will be formed with the specific selling point of having no traffic shaping/filtering/prioritizing.
Of course, thanks again to governmental interference in the marketplace (franchise agreements) starting a new ISP is easier said than done. More's the pity.
Re:Oh goody (Score:5, Insightful)
You ignore reality. There isn't a lot of choice for most people on what ISP they use. So no, there will not be a better option. As far as techniques, it will be a constant escalation between the two sides which will just take up more bandwidth and cause everyone's connection to be slow.
You folks need to wake up and understand that corporations do not and never will have your best interest in mind. Government regulations may not always be good, but in this case having a regulation that guaranteed net neutrality would benefit everyone. Of course that doesn't resonate well with the tin-foil hat and Fox News watchers out there.
Re:Meme (Score:5, Insightful)
If they can filter content, based on whatever they want to do, they lose their common carrier status,
Lose what? They don't have common carrier status. They never were common carriers.
In fact they have lobbied and fought hard to AVOID getting common carrier status. Being a common carrier would expose them to regulatory oversight they DO NOT WANT. And would limit them from doing certain types of Deep packet inspection, traffic shaping, etc, etc, that they DO WANT.
and are now responsible for all content passed over their networks.
Except libel and slander because they are exempted from respoonsibility in the communications decency act. Except Copyright infringement because they are protected provided they follow DMCA takedown requests. And so on.
I am sure they will get out of it somehow.
Of course they will. By and large they already have.
win for the constitution (Score:3, Insightful)
Free Market, love it? (Score:2, Insightful)
Once the internet is completely metered and locked down, with corporate traffic given huge priority over private traffic, I wonder if all the "free market solves everything" libertarian types will still be so anti-regulation....
Slashdot seems to have a fairly large amount of 'free market solves all' people. Maybe strangling the internet is the thing that will make some of them realize that certain things do deserve either heavy regulation or government ownership:)
Since this is the "information super highway", maybe it should get the same level of government control as the Federal Highway System.
Re:Oh goody (Score:5, Insightful)
I've got no problem with a general distrust of government, but when you turn around and bend over for someone who doesn't even bother to pay lip service to your welfare, I gotta question your sanity.
Re:Oh goody (Score:5, Insightful)
>>>no need for government regulation here - it would only benefit the existing ISPs at the expense of the consumer.
That's equivalent to saying there's no need for the government to regulate the Gas & Electric companies, or the Phone company, because it would only benefit the monopoly. I say "bull" to that. Whenever a monopoly exists, the government should either regulate the monopoly, or regulate it, or break it up and restore competition.
Re:What now? (Score:1, Insightful)
"We're so screwed. All politicians are so technologically ignorant they can't tell when a lobbyist is lying to them, and even if they could tell many wouldn't care."
Or perhaps they understand that government shoudn't be micromanaging ISP's.
"I am moving the hell out of this country ASAP. Day after day its just worse news. "
No you're not. Like the people that screamed about how they'd move to Canada or New Zealand in 2004 if Bush won re-election, you're going to stay right where you are and bitch some more on the Internet.
"US is going to have some massive brain drain soon, I predict."
I'll take that bet. Where's all this talent going to go? Bastions of Internet freedom like... China? How about Europe, where governments are increasingly using technology to snoop on every aspect of the lives of their citizens and subjects? But hey, lets leave America because Comcast is throttling bandwidth when we're downloading illegal movie torrents. See ya. The airline ticket counter is that way.
Re:Oh goody (Score:5, Insightful)
That would be true but the 1996 Bill tied no strings to the dollars. For example Congress typically says, "Raise your drinking age to 21, else your federal highway funds will be reduced by 5%."
Congress could have done something similar, mandating companies have equal access to all websites else get no funds, but they did not. As is typical of Cognress they handed corporations lots of money and no strings attached.
Re:Oh goody (Score:5, Insightful)
2) ISPs will be formed with the specific selling point of having no traffic shaping/filtering/prioritizing.
This has been claimed for years and yet this hasn't actually happened. You live in a fantasy world if you actually believe such nonsense. The entrenched ISPs would kill off any such company.
Seriously? (Score:5, Insightful)
What is the point of having the FCC if you don't let it do its job? Under what guise could anyone come under the impression that this isn't FCC Jurisdiction?
Lacks the Authority? It should be the Authority. The courts should only be called in when the FCC is doing something that is questionable. Instead, they have prevented the FCC from stopping all of the questionable behavior that is undoubtedly going to be spawned by this.
With Wikileaks the other day, and now this, news is giving me a serious headache this week.
Re:Oh goody (Score:4, Insightful)
When the government got involved.
Re:Oh goody (Score:2, Insightful)
There isn't a lot of choice for most people on what ISP they use
That wouldn't have anything to do with the fact that your local government grants monopoly status to your local cable and telco, would it?
Government regulations may not always be good
Indeed. Government regulations are the very reason why most Americans live under a monopoly/duopoly environment for internet access.
Of course that doesn't resonate well with the tin-foil hat and Fox News watchers out there.
A genuine free market for internet services would also help everyone, but that doesn't resonate well with the MSNBC watchers out there.
Re:Oh goody (Score:5, Insightful)
In a free market, if their product is crap, you don't buy it. You don't have the option with the government.
You also don't have that option with ISPs. There's no free market there.
Re:Oh goody (Score:5, Insightful)
If what you say is true, then Comcast would be fighting FOR net neutrality. If you've noticed, they are fighting against it.
Government regulation occurs locally as a defense against a particular kind of market failure: natural monopoly. The monopoly is going to exist whether the government gets involved or not, so the best course of action is to regulate it. If another start-up came along and ran another set of cables to every house, they would go bankrupt. In this case of natural monopoly, having more than one set of wires running to each home is simply less efficient than having only one. Everyone loses if companies run more than one set of wires, as everything gets more expensive. It's a simple fact: a natural monopoly means that a monopoly is more efficient. So, we can either encourage a fake competition (which means everyone loses) or we regulate a single entity. Or, we wait the decades or more for technology to change the market, but an unregulated natural monopoly is going to do everything in its power to kill any technological change that threatens it. Regulation really is the best option. Only closed minded free market ideologues think the free market is always the best option. Reasonable people know that it fails sometimes, and then government must step in. As with most things in life, the middle ground is often the best.
Re:Oh goody (Score:5, Insightful)
How exactly is saying that you have to resell (on reasonable terms) the monopoly that you are being given (OK, paying a paltry sum for) to others who will do work and give you a reasonable profit from "micromanaging"? The FCC does not seem to be dictating a lot more than "you have to allow for competition". With all the rhetoric going around about "the free market", this seems to actually be a great example of where a more free market would benefit the public, with the only downsides being to the established (and government sanctioned) monopolies.
This same idea has worked out pretty well for phone service, while still allowing the major monopolies to still be the dominent players.
Re:Oh goody (Score:4, Insightful)
Why not micromanage? How is the internet not necessary to function in daily life. The government is moving more and more services to the net. Without high speed access, people will be left out. If we don't make the net a public utility now, we will lose our access to government in the future.
For example, if you live in Mass. you can't have your natural gas cut off, no matter how much you owe in winter. If companies were allowed to do whatever they want, it would cut off gas in winter and let people freeze to death. We have similar rules all over the US for phone, water, power, and others.
Net access needs to be treated the same. It should be a right to have cheep, high speed, unfiltered, unshaped, internet access.
Re:Oh goody (Score:4, Insightful)
When companies became involved and wanted to spoil the golden goose, the government stepped in to save the goose. Now the courts have given the companies the rope to kill the goose.
Login page, NOT the opinion (Score:4, Insightful)
Net Neutrality is simple, don't let FUD throw you (Score:3, Insightful)
Ah, really? What alternative definitions, besides the common one, have you heard? It's really pretty simple and it boils down to this: you treat everyone's traffic on your network the same, whether any of the endpoints are in your network or not. You want to perform traffic shaping? Fine, you shape traffic the same for your customers as you do for your peers. What you can't do is say, "well, Google isn't paying me for hosting, so I'm going to slow down everyone's access to Google until Google pays me." See? Simple.
So prove to me that your comment isn't FUD and tell me what other definitions you've heard.
Re:What now? (Score:4, Insightful)
Also, eastern europe is pretty much a dark spot - does anyone know if there is filtering or throttling there, and, if so, how much?
Re:Oh goody (Score:4, Insightful)
While I agree with you, and I appreciate the potential value of a tiered internet, I have no other choice but feel doomed by this decision.
Net-neutrality almost ensures that everyone one has an equal opportunity/experience on the internet (for those who have access). It is the first step to freeing information.
As well as it is evident that Comcast, and other companies like it, want to move to a measured-rate means of charging. Combine that with tiered traffic speeds and the cost of using the internet is going to skyrocket. Online gaming and media streaming will cost a fortune to the user.
And while the FCC is not the appropriate entity to regulate this, they were our only hope in maintaining net-neutrality. Democrats and Republicans, and politicians in general have demonstrated time and time again they are not capable of managing issues like these.
Re:Tariffs are a comin'.... (Score:4, Insightful)
>You really think that such improvements would happen in a hyper-regulated marketplace?
As evidence by Europe: yes.
Note: basic consumer protection is not "hyper-regulated", only an ignorant anarchocapitalist thinks that kinda crap - and considering implementing even a few of the anarchocapitalist deregulatory wet dreams led to the current recession: why the @#%$ should we listen to you?
Re:Don't give up so easily (Score:3, Insightful)
Why would the local or state government want to regulate it though?
I don't know if you've noticed, but a lot of states aren't doing so hot right now with their budgets. Now, you've got two choices
A) Spend more money on regulating Comcast, because your voters say so
B) Say you care, accept a stipend, look the other way.
The FCC was really the best shot at handling this issue - they may not have been the perfect entity but they are better than the alternatives. The last thing you need is internet access dependant on states, otherwise you'll be getting into a whole can of worms where people are shifting around the country based on that, and what state is regulating it. If it eventually pans out to a consolidated regulated system, it will have been too late and more damage will have been done.
Not an FCC issue (Score:4, Insightful)
That doesn't make them dictators. (Score:2, Insightful)
The preample of the constitution begins:
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
That doesn't give the government the power to do whatever it wants just because it thinks that it insures domestic tranquility. It is just a non-binding purpose of statement, and the specific grants of power follow. The same is true of the section you quoted from the FCC charter.
The FCC are not the communication dictators of the US. They don't get to do whatever they want just because they think it is good idea. They have been granted specific powers to regulate specific aspects related to communication, and that is it.
In this case they had sanctioned Comcast for violating the FCC's Internet Policy Statement. The statement itself states that it is not legally binding, just a set of guidelines. In court, the FCC could not point to a single statute that gave them the power to regulate the internet in this manner. They were blatantly operating out of their granted powers and the judge ruled accordingly.
This is not a setback for net-neutrality, because net-neutrality doesn't exist yet. This ruling does nothing to prevent us from creating net-neutrality laws, nor is there any reason that it will sway popular opinion against them.
This is a win for the rule-of-law and should be applauded.
Re:Free Market, love it? (Score:1, Insightful)
1. The telco and cable markets are essentially creations of government. Therefore the word "regulation" hardly applies like it does to a regular business. This is less about free market vs. regulation, and more about government changing the rules for corporatism. Whatever the outcome, you can be sure that both government and the "private sector" (wink, wink) will profit.
2. I notice a lot more "free market solves nothing" people here on slashdot than "free market solves everything". The amount of pro-government idealogy here is scary, considering that superpower governments today are richer and more powerful than ever before in history. And yet, like clockwork, every day slashdotters call for even more government.
Re:Oh goody (Score:5, Insightful)
HINT: "Rights" never require action on the part of someone else.
Oh, good. I'll let all the nation's court justices and bailiffs know that they can retire now and due process will carry on without them.
Re:Oh goody (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah except there are no nannystaters. Practically, no one believes that the government should just be obeyed and never questioned, at least in the US.
There are people who believe that a robust government can encourage and even enhance the general welfare, rights and pursuit of happiness of its citizens if managed reasonably well.
There are also people who believe that large private entities with drastically reduced legal liabilities should not have the same rights or to the same degree as living citizens.
Re:Oh goody (Score:1, Insightful)
How is the internet not necessary to function in daily life.
Seriously? Do you eat it, or breathe it, or take shelter in it when the weather gets bad?
Re:Oh goody (Score:3, Insightful)
Wow. Get some perspective. You do realize that losing your internet connection will not result in you freezing to death, right?
As a "utility", internet service is pretty low on the ranking. Water is a biological necessity. Heat, during winter months, is a biological necessity. Phone is important for access to emergency services. Electric is generally required for delivery of water and/or heat in some fashion.
If you're going to declare the internet a "utility", and then claim it's a critical utility in the interests of your net neutrality goals, you have to then demonstrate how it's okay to leave millions of homes across the US without an internet connection, but those who already have it can't possibly have it cut off or managed in any way by the ISP.
Re:That doesn't make them dictators. (Score:3, Insightful)
Nearly anything is true when you operate on the principles of confirmation bias.
Re:Oh goody (Score:3, Insightful)
Government regulation of our food supply is fucking us over right now (farm subsidies? politicians obeying the meat and dairy lobby? the fucking food pyramid, for Christ's Sake?), so there you go.
If you want to go back to having children pack human flesh in your canned meat products [wikipedia.org], go ahead and make your case. Don't worry. I'll wait. Your issue is not government regulation. It's ineffective government regulation.
And finally...Corporations are made up of people. Stop trying to demonize them and acknowledge that we are fucking ourselves!
The difference between a large powerful corporation and a large powerful democracy is that you can influence the government with just your vote. If Shell wants to drill in front of your beachfront condo and you have no government to regulate their activities, what are your options? Do you think they will acquiesce to your complaints instead of netting a few billion dollars?
The argument that the government is bought off with lobbyists is not an argument for stronger corporations. It's an argument for stronger government.
Re:Oh goody (Score:3, Insightful)
Even if your only choices were DSL, cable, or no Internet at all, however, that's still far more of an option than you'll get from the government. They only give you one choice: pay up.
Unlike corporations, you have a direct say in how your government is run, including how much needs to be paid up, and what it is used for.
Re:Oh goody (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Oh goody (Score:3, Insightful)
"I disagree with your opinion" is fine with me.
Modding me "troll" is not. Nothing I said in the above post was trollish. I was expressing my opinion, which apparently is backed-up by a U.S. Appeal Court's opinion. If you want Comcast regulated, then contact your local state government and ask them to do it, as they are already doing with other monopolies (electrical, natural gas, phone). The State PUC would be the entity responsible.
Look on the bright side... (Score:3, Insightful)
Comcast can now negotiate with every property owner over/through whose properties their Internet links pass. No more free ride, and major costs.
Live by the sword, die by it.
Re:Oh goody (Score:3, Insightful)
Keep on truckin'!
Re:Oh goody (Score:5, Insightful)
The long answer is, there are many different kinds of rights. Natural rights are those that are thought to be inherently granted; legal rights are those granted by a body politic.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_and_legal_rights [wikipedia.org]
Positive rights require action. Universal healthcare is a positive right, since it requires someone to provide that healthcare. Negative rights require inaction. Right to life, liberty, and property are negative rights, since they require that someone NOT take those things from you.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_and_positive_rights [wikipedia.org]
There are also the concepts of claim rights (a right which entails some responsibility on the part of the right-holder) and liberty rights (a right which does not).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claim_rights_and_liberty_rights [wikipedia.org]
Healthcare and the Internet could easily become rights if the government decrees that they are rights. With respect to the Internet, this is what the GGGP was arguing should happen.
Re:Oh goody (Score:5, Insightful)
Okay, if that is your argument, shut off your power, water, don't drive on the roads, don't send your kids to public school, don't fly, don't go to the hospital, don't use medicine, move to the middle of nowhere and build a house out of mud. All of those things are wants. We don't have the right to any of them.
We the people funded the internet. We the people subsidized the cables in the ground. We the people own the airways. We the people should have access to what we paid for. If companies want to make profit of of the infrastructure, they need to follow the rules we put in place.
Re:Oh goody (Score:3, Insightful)
Congress ties strings to dollars to coerce states to cede their rights and powers to the federal government. They hand out money to corporations without strings because congress and the senate are on the take for campaign contributions, vacations and hookers.
Re:telecom (Score:3, Insightful)
And they don't. I can not lay my hand on any part of the Constitution which says "Congress may force the People to buy a product, or else fine them."
What's next? We will all have to buy hybrids, or else if we buy a normal car we'll be fined? We have to all buy tankless water heaters, or else we'll be fined? We have to all buy the Bush Biography, or else we'll all be fined?
free market bullshit (Score:4, Insightful)
did free market work out the issues in wall street ?
stop believing that 'free market' religion. it NEVER existed at any point in human history, just like real communism. BECAUSE THEY ARE TOO IDEALISTIC AND CANT EXIST.
once a company acquires monopoly, it doesnt matter shit whether it acquired it through legitimate means, or underhand means. a monopoly is a monopoly.
its even stupider to expect the monopoly or near monopoly companies and groups not to ab use their power for their own profit, at the expense of the people or the free market. "oh, im near monopoly, i can lock out everyone and force my will upon everyone, but, well, i shouldnt do this, because it is unethical" => can you expect this from any executive officer of any company ?
"people will make choices, and all will be good" BUT WHO GETS STRONGEST FIRST DENIES THE PEOPLE THE RIGHT TO MAKE CHOICES. they lock them down into their stuff only. just like how 30% of america is locked down to one single ISP, just like how despite seemingly having an innumerable array of cleaning liquids/products in your local wal mart, more than half of them are produced by a single company, procter&gamble. choice is in the labeling only. source is the same.
below is an excerpt from another well made post by another user in /. in another thread :
"Free market capitalism has never been tried"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_market [wikipedia.org] [wikipedia.org]
"Free market economics is closely associated with laissez-faire economic philosophy, which advocates approximating this condition in the real world by mostly confining government intervention in economic matters to regulating against force and fraud among market participants."
The USA tried something close to a laissez faire marketplace and it failed miserably.
Starting in 1898, there was an explosion of regulation and the breaking up of monopolies.
Free markets did not self-regulate. They polluted, colluded, abused the workforce,
sold unhealthy foods, caused stock/bank crashes and a 101 other things.
The EPA, SEC, FTC, FDA, OSHA, etc are all the direct result of that failed philosophy.
The problem with advocating a "free" market is that it is simply bad public policy to let
a corporation kill 100 people and then settle the matter afterwards through the court.
Ideology rarely succeeds in the real world.
Re:This is terrible news...but here's the doc (Score:5, Insightful)
Sheesh, forget your drama queen pills this morning?
There is nothing terrible about this decision, because this decision has nothing to do with net neutrality. It was a decision about whether a government agency has carte blanche to do whatever the hell it wants without any congressional oversight, much less voter oversight.
Please, get a clue. Anyone with a brain does NOT WANT GOVERNMENT AGENCIES HAVING UNLIMITED POWER, even if they do things you like. They next decision might be something you don't like, and you won't have any way to stop them.
If you want net neutrality, then fine, get the government to pass a law. That's the way we do things in a representative democracy. We do NOT want government by executive order.
Re:Oh goody (Score:3, Insightful)
What the hell? Handing control of the internet back to the government would be the end of the internet. This is a good thing. I'll never understand the argument that the government is somehow less biased and corrupt than corporations, and most importantly, ISPs are selling a service and can regulate it as much as they want. Don't like it? Don't use it. The internet isn't a right.
Sysadmins have the right to regulate network traffic. Bribed, corrupt politicians shouldn't be involved. People who want "net neutrality" want the government watching and regulating internet traffic. Think how insane that scenario is.
$BIGGOV (Score:3, Insightful)
Hi, I'm $BIGGOV!
You are required by law to be fucked up the ass, or we'll throw you in jail. $BIGCORP has lobbied us to limit your torrent traffic, and $CORRUPTPOLITICIAN wants us to "regulate" your visits to undesirable, unfair websites. Unlike $BIGCORP, you can't replace us, but somehow, we're better to have than $BIGCORP.
Since you've signaled that you don't believe a company is allowed to have control over its own product services for some reason, we've gone ahead and instituted control of all other areas of life. No need to reply, and no choices to be made--we've already signed the legislation.
Don't worry. We won't monitor your internet traffic for nefarious reasons. Heh.
Your ever-watchful Big Brother,
$BIGGOV
Re:Oh goody (Score:3, Insightful)
I know this is Slashdot, but the article is clear (Score:3, Insightful)
Seems pretty clear that this falls squarely within it's right to regulate. Unless you can explain how the Internet isn't "communication by wire or radio".
The legal reasoning is solid on this one. The court told the FCC it can't regulate broadband on the basis of broad principles. It has to regulate on the basis of laws it has been mandated to implement.
BigGov haters, this is not a repudiation of the FCC's authority. It just means the FCC can't go off on its own and make major policy changes on the basis of broad principles created by itself, rather than by laws created by elected Congresscritters.
BigCorp haters, this does not mean the telcos can suddenly do whatever they like. This ruling may actually strengthen the case in Congress for a serious revisiting of the regulatory structure around broadband. Comcast has definitely won this battle, but they may still lose the war.
Re:Oh goody (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Oh goody (Score:1, Insightful)
If another start-up came along and ran another set of cables to every house, they would go bankrupt. In this case of natural monopoly, having more than one set of wires running to each home is simply less efficient than having only one. Everyone loses if companies run more than one set of wires, as everything gets more expensive. It's a simple fact: a natural monopoly means that a monopoly is more efficient. So, we can either encourage a fake competition (which means everyone loses) or we regulate a single entity. Or, we wait the decades or more for technology to change the market, but an unregulated natural monopoly is going to do everything in its power to kill any technological change that threatens it. Regulation really is the best option. Only closed minded free market ideologues think the free market is always the best option. Reasonable people know that it fails sometimes, and then government must step in. As with most things in life, the middle ground is often the best.
Really ? New competitors would go bankrupt or lead to higher costs ? So the cutthroat competition here (Romania) between a few big ISPs and thousands of small ones that led to some of the lowest prices and fastest internet speeds in the world must be some delusion I suffer from. The 4 ISPs that I previously believed available to me personally must be part of a related delusion.
Wrong (I disagree with Wickard, but....) (Score:4, Insightful)
Nobody here disputes that Congress could pass laws to give the FCC such power. At most that's where Wickard would come in but I don't think you'd have to rely on Wickard (which involved interstate commerce powers and growing a portion of one's wheat crop for personal use-- while I think Wickard was wrongly decided, it isn't really relevant here). However here you have money clearly changing hands for a service, which involves interstate communication. That's pretty uncontroversially inside the power to regulate interstate commerce.
Wickard was at its basis a question of the scope of powers that Congress had under the "necessary and proper" clause as it relates to interstate commerce. It was a Constitutional question.
However the FCC can only act on powers specifically delegated to them by Congress. Unless Congress acts, the FCC cannot. That would pose other problems including separation of powers issues.
This decision here involving Comcast was a good one. It ensures that elected lawmakers make the laws, rather than unelected beaurocrats. Whether or not you like the immediate outcome, it seems like supporting the idea that Congress makes the laws and the FCC only acts pursuant to them is a good thing. Anyone really disagree with that?
Re:Wiccard V Filburn grants FCC regulation (Score:3, Insightful)
First, Wickard has been wounded by more recent cases (including Lopez, Morrison, and even Raich). In each case, the courts have stood by the Wickard decision but narrowed it to a fairly basic holding, namely that Congress, pursuant its powers to regulate interstate commerce, can regulate the production of goods and services which are likely to "leak out" into the area of interstate commerce. In Raich, for example, Wickard was characterized not as supporting the goal of price support by any means necessary, but rather via the concern that the wheat for personal use would be sold in interstate commerce if there was a surplus.
Wickard was a pretty aweful decision. I don't think anyone here would stand by the dicta in that opinion that Congress could require the purchase of wheat solely in order to increase wheat prices and support farmers, nor is it likely that the current court would pay as much attention to the fact that wheat is pretty fungible that the court did in Wickard. It's an outlier and although it hasn't been formally overturned, I wouldn't read it broadly and expect it to hold up. It should be read narrowly and as characterized in Raich and Morrison.
Secondly Wickard is entirely irrelevant here. The question of whether the FCC can regulate broadband in this fashion is not a commerce clause question, but rather a more general question of separation of powers. I have no doubt that Congress could delegate this power to the FCC, but that is far different from saying they have actually done so.....
FCC + Net Neutrality != Net Neutrality (Score:2, Insightful)
Once again, this farce is playing itself out and hardly anyone seems to have learned from history. Once the government is granted the authority to regulate the internet ISPs at the traffic level, it's all over.
Of course, at first it will be regulation to ensure a fair playing field. But now they have the authority. Next, it will be regulations to ensure a playing field the government wants. And in the end, the big corporations will influence the regulation by lobbying and hob-knobbing with the government to use the FCC to force smaller, innovative competitors out of business and cement their monopoly rule. They've already been doing this for years, on average, with telecoms and everything else. Oil, healthcare, you name it.
It's so sad that all of these super intelligent people on Slashdot are arguing for the FCC to be granted these powers, or for Congress to grant them this power when doing so will, according to history, bring about the exact situation everyone here seeks to avoid.
The ONLY solution to maximize internet freedom is no regulation at all.
Re:Oh goody (Score:3, Insightful)
That is fucking stupid.
The central tenet of net neutrality is, get ready for it....
neutrality
No corporate executive dictation.
You may or may not be old enough to remember the days before internet freedom, when there was a *MAJOR* toll to be paid by anyone wishing to cross the boundaries established by manufacturers (Hello, IBM of the '70's) or providers (hello, AT&T before Carterfone) or postal/telegraph monopolies (hello, old Europe).
Then came along a non-encumbered, free and open internet.
???
Piles and SHITLOADS of profit, growing every day. Providing room for anyone with the willingness and ability to compete openly and freely.
Net neutrality is, by definition, freedom: The free flow of information among those who would exchange it, independent of corporate desire to limit that freedom.
Re:This is terrible news...but here's the doc (Score:2, Insightful)
Let me get this straight... (Score:2, Insightful)
The internet is *the* killer app. People buy computers for the sole reason of accessing resources on the net. The amount of commerce facilitated worldwide is staggering. And these jokers are telling us they can't make a successful business model out of it.
The ideal system relies on multiple tiers of providers, each one leasing bandwidth from their parent and redistributing it to their clients. This happens down to the end user, who should be expected to pay for all the bandwidth that they use. Simple. As the end user, they pay only for the bandwidth of received data, not for the total distance the data was required to travel.
This allows a level playing field for new media enterprises, personal publishing, and an ever evolving means of communication. It has revolutionized the world in a very short time, vaulting third-world nations into emerging powerhouses, and connecting people in ways that previous generations could not have imagined.
So, to put this in jeopardy for the reasons given is patently criminal.
The only reason that ISPs have run into problems is that they've criminally oversold their bandwidth. They truly have been selling something they don't already own. If you purchase a contract for a 50Mb connection, they should expect that connection to be saturated 100% of the time. If it's unlimited, they should bill according to their costs. If that doesn't make sense to the consumer, sell bandwidth by the MB. Instead, they've built a business model on the presumption that end users would only utilize a fraction of what what sold.
In reality, this is greed on several levels, since it not only reveals unfair trade practices (they're selling something they don't have), but they're also trying to kill competition when verticals are in question. They were more than happy to jump on the bandwagon when they were in high growth mode, but now the fight has taken to the trenches some have decided to get ugly.
This is bigger than any one company or one country. Long term, few issues will have an impact quite as powerful as net neutrality on how our civilization evolves.