Cable Giants, ISPs, Telcos End Legal Fight Against California's Net Neutrality Law

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: California Attorney General Rob Bonta on Wednesday welcomed the decision by a group of telecom and cable industry associations to abandon their legal challenge of the US state's net neutrality law SB822. "My office has fought for years to ensure that internet service providers can't interfere with or limit what Californians do online," said Bonta in a statement. "Now the case is finally over. Following multiple defeats in court, internet service providers have abandoned this effort to block enforcement of California's net neutrality law. With this victory, we've secured a free and open internet for California's 40 million residents once and for all."

In December 2017, then Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chair Ajit Pai tossed out the 2015 net neutrality rules put in place during the Obama administration, freeing broadband providers to block, throttle, and prioritize internet traffic, among other things -- all of which were disallowed under the 2015 rules. On September 30, 2018, then California Governor Jerry Brown signed into law Senate Bill 822 (SB822), which more or less restored those rules. That same day, the Justice Department under the Trump administration challenged the law, as subsequently did the broadband companies benefiting from what Pai at the time referred to as a "light-touch approach."

The Justice Department, under the Biden administration, ended its opposition to California's net neutrality law back in February, 2021. The industry plaintiffs continued fighting SB822 in court but faced a setback in January, 2022, when the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit refused to block the law's enforcement as litigation progressed. Now those groups -- ACA Connects (America's Communications Association), CTIA (The Wireless Association), NCTA (The Internet & Television Association), and USTelecom (The Broadband Association) -- have withdrawn too. The trade associations, with the agreement of Bonta, filed a joint stipulation of dismissal without prejudice [PDF], which ends the telco legal challenge but allows the claim to be refiled at some later date.

please join this class action

[davecotter]

they won't give it to us, we have to make them

https://www.change.org/p/ca-cl... [change.org]

Re:

[aldousd666]

"Bring your own equipment" implies there is legal liability for the party that provides a service on a platform that they do not control. This is probably not too dissimilar from 'right to repair' after all things are said and done, but I can understand why there's resistance. For example, lets say if you require all traffic to be neutral, but the guy next door downloading porn supercedes your request to place a 911 call on VOIP... that's something that requires regulation, like, that a VOIP call to 911 be

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[account_deleted]

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I have Comcast my other Choice is ATT

[Crashmarik]

So I only want pain for my ISP. My hatred of my ISP choices was so great I had a T1 run into my home back in 2000 and kept it until I retired and moved. That said, as bad as they are anyone in California who has that band of lunatics the state calls a government deciding what's appropriate for their ISP to do, has my sympathy.

Re: I have Comcast my other Choice is ATT

[madbrain]

My choice is 1.2 Gbps down / 35 Mbps up Comcast. Or 128 kbps IDSL from AT&T . Or some wireless services that barely reach indoors. I tested a Verizon SIM in a 5G phone a few months ago. It managed 1 kbps down / 0 kbps up. Brought me right back to the Minitel in 1981 (V23 , 1200/75 bps).
Guess which one of the 3 I have.

So Plan A failed ...

[PinkyGigglebrain]

moving on to Plan B;
the Telco's, etc, will now get one of their pet Congrescritters to add some rider onto a 'must pass' bill that over rides the states ability to pass laws relating to Net Neutrality. Since the Internet crosses state lines or some other such BS reasons being cited to argue that only the Federal Government can regulate what the ISPs and such can do.

This isn't over by any stretch of the imagination.

There's an easy enough way to stop that

[rsilvergun]

Show up at your primary and vote blue. I know it's verboten to discuss partisan politics but this is absolutely a partisan issue. The Democrats are in favor of maintaining net neutrality in the Republicans are not. The only question is, is this issue important enough to you to vote and vote for a Democrat.

Re:

[suutar]

Problem with that is the FCC's justification for dropping NN is "we don't have the authority to regulate that stuff, the states do". If congress makes it the FCC's bailiwick, that excuse goes poof.

They'll take it to the Supreme Court next

[rsilvergun]

They're going to go after the Federal legislature next. It'll get challenged and go up to our Supreme Court but I think we all know what's going to happen when it gets there.

It might take another 10 years for the Republican party to have a supermajority to push it through. The Democratic party has been crystal clear that they'll support net neutrality, although there is a couple of corrupt people in their party who would cheerfully sign off on the law undoing it.

Still I suppose it's better to have 10 years of freedom. And who knows maybe our country will come to its senses and stop electing pro corporate lunatics

Apple-Microsoft case all over again

[wyattstorch516]

The whole argument is moot at this point. Cable companies know that their video product is dying so trying to fight streaming is a waste of time. The streaming companies are competing with each other now instead of cable/satellite TV.

Cable/satellite TV will largely disappear over the next 20 years so the ISPs are transitioning to being Internet providers only. More profitable in the long run once they right size their companies.

Free as in Freedom, not as in California Taxes

[aldousd666]

It still costs a pretty penny. I wonder how they get around things like Traffic Shaping in support of 911 calls on homes that subscribe to VOIP services -- who are legally required to prioritize 911 audio call traffic on their networks... How is this neutral, and where do we draw the line?

Re:

[Zeratul2k]

It's neutral because 911 is not a commercial service. Honestly, the only people I've seen opposing net neutrality are the ones that don't understand what it really means. It's not about throwing years of research into QoS down the drain, it's about giving competitors in the same category of service a fair playing field. All streaming services get the same QoS level, all search engines get the same QoS level, all voice services get the same QoS level and so on. Without net neutrality Disney could pay to hav

A rarity

[groobly]

One of the few issues where Democrats are on the right side.