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The Internet Government United States

FCC Chair Accused of 'Political Theater' to Please Net Neutrality's Foes (freepress.net) 34

The advocacy group Free Press on Friday blasted America's Federal Communications Commission chief "for an order that rips net neutrality rules off the books, without any time for public comment, following an unfavorable court ruling," reports the nonprofit progressive news site Common Dreams: A panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit ruled in January that broadband is an "information service" instead of a "telecommunications service" under federal law, and the FCC did not have the authority to prohibit internet service providers (ISPs) from creating online "fast lanes" and blocking or throttling web content... FCC Chair Brendan Carr said in a Friday statement that as part of his "Delete, Delete, Delete" initiative, "we're continuing to clean house at the FCC, working to identify and eliminate rules that no longer serve a purpose, have been on our books for decades, and have no place in the current Code of Federal Regulations...."

Responding in a lengthy statement, Free Press vice president of policy and general counsel Matt Wood said that "the FCC's so-called deletion today is little more than political grandstanding. It's true that the rules in question were first stayed by the 6th Circuit and then struck down by that appellate court — in a poorly reasoned opinion. So today's bookkeeping maneuver changes very little in reality... There's no need to delete currently inoperative rules, much less to announce it in a summer Friday order. The only reason to do that is to score points with broadband monopolies and their lobbyists, who've fought against essential and popular safeguards for the past two decades straight...."

Wood noted that "the appeals process for this case has not even concluded yet, as Free Press and allies sought and got more time to consider our options at the Supreme Court. Today's FCC order doesn't impact either our ability to press the case there or our strategic considerations about whether to do so," he added. "It's little more than a premature housekeeping step..."

FCC Chair Accused of 'Political Theater' to Please Net Neutrality's Foes

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  • Like one that isn't expecting to have elections anymore. It's clearly expect one more round in the midterms but it's also clear that after the midterms they don't think that they need to care what any of us think.

    I think the Trump voter is know they fucked up but they're in too deep. A lot of them have lost family and friends for trump. It's classic cult like behavior where the cult leader is trying to cut you off from the outside world. And it's working.

    So midterms will still go maga and then Trump
    • You and Donald, always stuck on campaign mode, and always stuck on stupid.

    • by kenh ( 9056 )

      Like one that isn't expecting to have elections anymore. It's clearly expect one more round in the midterms but it's also clear that after the midterms they don't think that they need to care what any of us think.

      What?

      You saw this, right?

      It's true that the rules in question were first stayed by the 6th Circuit and then struck down by that appellate court — in a poorly reasoned opinion. So today's bookkeeping maneuver changes very little in reality...

      So the 6th circuit stays the rules, and then an appeals court strikes down the rule, but somehow going ahead and removing the stayed then struck down rule is somehow proof of an out of control administration?

      The person blasting the FCC even said there was no change, that removing the regulation was meaningless...

      Responding in a lengthy statement, Free Press vice president of policy and general counsel Matt Wood said that "the FCC's so-called deletion today is little more than political grandstanding.

      And added...

      So today's bookkeeping maneuver changes very little in reality... There's no need to delete currently inoperative rules, much less to announce it in a summer Friday order. The only reason to do that is to score points with broadband monopolies and their lobbyists, who've fought against essential and popular safeguards for the past two decades straight...."

      Which honestly makes no sense - if you want to bury something you release it on Friday, and trust me, the "broadband monopolies and their lobbyists" knew the out

  • by PPH ( 736903 ) on Saturday July 12, 2025 @11:47AM (#65515252)

    broadband is an "information service" instead of a "telecommunications service" under federal law,

    ... an idiot. Still back in the era of 'the Internet is a series of tubes.' My ISP supplies me with _no_ information on their own. Only that which is provided by actuall information services, like Wikipedia, Amazon and Slashdot for subsequent transportation to customers. Actually the 'series of tubes' description comes a lot closer than what these judges cooked up.

    • My friend you need to look at how to spin these cases. Since ISPs are no longer telecommunications companies, a lot of the government fees should be removed as well (this does not translate to customers savings). Police wiretaps require court orders again. Mergers and acquisitions have less regulatory tape.

      Most importantly the barrier to entry has been lowered greatly as an ISP is not bound to telecommunications regulations. Letâ(TM)s not forget why the net neutrality argument even started. Netflix use

    • Anyone else mentally reading these as "The opposition party today criticized the current administration...."?

      It makes reading the news headlines and articles much easier.

      It also helps prevent elected officials, leaders of nonprofits, social agitators from continually promoting their personal brand and paid speaker bureau fee potential by existing solely to criticize the other party's administration.

      It is like the old advice given to a fresh just out of college hire:

      - If you come to a meeting only to point o

    • by kenh ( 9056 )

      Are you arguing that no ISPs provide information services, or just your particular ISP?

      Quite a few ISPs own streaming services, but you knew that, right?

      • by PPH ( 736903 )

        You've got that backwards. Offering information services should not qualify you for an exemption from regulation as a telecommunications service if that's a part of your business. Even a tiny part. Don't like it? Divest yourself of the telecommunications part. Or place it into a holding company/subsidiary.

  • There is no Telecommunications services anymore if we don't have the internet marked as one.

    Phone companies are removing landlines:
    https://www.usatoday.com/story... [usatoday.com]

    Many of the top ISPs are all phone companies:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

    But at the same time we're ruling the internet isn't used for communication, just information.

    Your phone runs online now, you use email to talk to people, even your sms messages are sent online along with everything else. But somehow, any random ISP can block or throttl

    • >can block
      >can throttle

      You realize a lot of ISPs block ports like HTTP, SMTP, SMB.. right? Should we allow unfettered access to services that when compromised affects the entirety of the internet? Iâ(TM)m okay with gating it behind a more expensive service since, you know, most home users donâ(TM)t need to send email to every smtp server on the internet

    • by kenh ( 9056 )

      But at the same time we're ruling the internet isn't used for communication, just information.

      No, we're not - certain telecom services (think voip phone service) use information services to transport their calls, most telcom services use private data networks to carry their calls, not the public internet.

      You don't think Verizon, southwestern bell, etc use the public internet to carry their phone traffic do you?

  • by sound+vision ( 884283 ) on Saturday July 12, 2025 @04:00PM (#65515714) Journal

    It's my first time hearing this phrase, but I'd like to clarify it a bit: Destroy, destroy, destroy. That seems to be all the people in power now are capable of doing.

    Rebuilding America will take generations. It can't even begin until this system of government is erased. And that can't be done until people get tired of the destruction.

  • I'd like to question the argument for so-called "net neutrality" by comparing it to something I'll call "Postal Neutrality".

    Under Net neutrality an ISP is prevented from charging users higher fees for faster service - that is the essential argument as I understand it.

    Under "Postal Neutrality" the post office would be prevented from offering customers expedited delivery of letters and packages for a premium price.

    You would never argue for "Postal Neutrality" but somehow "Net neutrality" makes sense?

    The claim

    • Re:Postal Neutrality (Score:4, Informative)

      by notsouseful ( 6407080 ) on Sunday July 13, 2025 @11:25AM (#65517326)

      Hey Ken, you kind of have it backwards - the problem is not that they can "provide some services faster", it's that they can "determine arbitrarily which services will be provided slower". Without net neutrality it's rather that the ISPs can make other traffic crawl, especially traffic that is competitive with services that they offer, such as streaming applications when the ISP offers cable services and their own streaming platforms. They can effectively prevent the use of select services by making them infeasible due to service constraints. They will do all this by saying "we're just not providing them at our faster speeds", and they will try to force content providers to cough up money to them directly as well. One of the more public examples of this was Comcast vs Netflix [theguardian.com] back in 2014. You might be ok with an internet where you need to pay all the other random ISPs directly for your merchant site to be available "at reasonable speeds" to their customers, but I certainly do not.

    • Interesting analogy, but it does not hold up for me because special actions have to be taken to physically move a package faster. Actions have to be taken to prioritize internet traffic, rather than to have neutrality. In other words Postal neutrality requires special action while Net neutrality requires that you take no action, which is the exact opposite. Special action means cost. No action means no cost. Iâ(TM)m not trying to argue for net neutrality here. Iâ(TM)m just saying the analogy

  • Because I'm pretty sure they've already openly admitted that's literally what it is. It's no secret the Republicans are openly fighting a war against the United States and its people right now.
    • It's never been a secret, they've been telling us they want to do all this stuff for decades. Literally for my whole life they have been saying they want to end social aid programs and reduce the size of the government and let businesses perform functions for profit, they wanted to end birthright citizenship, they wanted to make America white again... Most people have just been in denial about it, and what it means.

Our country has plenty of good five-cent cigars, but the trouble is they charge fifteen cents for them.

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