> And because of that move they lost their common carrier argument.

> "We could not remain neutral after these claims of secret support by Cloudflare."

So common carrier status is forfeited if a company reasonably terminates a contract due to the actions of the other party?

Honestly part of the problem with this discussion is that people are just making stuff up. CDNs never had "Common Carrier" status, so all arguments around it make no sense.

That being said, this argument is a recurring theme. It came up when spez edited comments on "/r/the_donald" and comes up any time a company enforces it's own TOS to a way the alt-right and libertarian crowds don't like.

I can come up with dozens of examples of companies exercising control over the content of their networks without issue. Reddit removed "fatpeoplehate" and related subs, youtube removes terrorism recruitment videos, and even Cloudflare removes malware (if pushed hard enough). None of those cases resulted in this mythical "common carrier" status from being removed, or caused them legal issues in other ways. If I'm wrong it should be easy enough to come up with examples proving it, but that won't happen.

Reddit has never tried to argue it should be thought of as a common carrier to a judge. Cloud fare did.

>to a way the alt-right and libertarian crowds don't like.

sci-hub is appreciated by far more people than the alt-right and libertarian crowds. Is there any particular reason you felt the need to try to politicize it?

Please reread what I said. My comment had nothing to do with sci-hub at all- I am explicitly talking about the people who keep bringing up the "common carrier" claims whenever someone removes content they don't like.

For some reason the alt-right has been all over this claim, and they use it whenever they get censored (either on reddit or twitter), and the libertarian crowd does the same here on this website.

Also, I do want to point out something- saying that someone's argument isn't valid because they have a misunderstanding of the law is not the same thing as taking a side. I think sci-hub is awesome, but I'm not going to defend it by making stuff up.

>>the libertarian crowd does the same here on this website.

I have never seen "the libertarian crowd" (of which I count myself a member of) use "common carrier" language on anything outside Internet Service Providers, NN, and Title II regulations.

We defend free speech, and want to hold organizations that claim to support free speech to actually supporting free speech, We believe if a website says "They support free speech and want to allow free exchange of ideas" that they actually uphold those claims... to make a public claim of supporting free exchange of ideas or free speech on your platform then use heavily handed censorship is in our opinion very similar to bait and switch fraud and should be considered as such under the law even if you sneak in some provisions on page 100 of your 8point font legalese terms of service...

I know we libertarians are soo crazy with our ethics and principles...

There's no such thing as common carrier status for CDNs, but, when you're in court trying not to take a site down you'll have to make arguments about why you took others down but don't want to take this one down, part of that is how consistently you applied your own standards.

"We don't take sites down if the content is not illegal" is a pretty clear consistent position to fall back on.

"We don't take sites down if the content is not illegal except that one time the CEO decided we would" is not, so you need a different reason, and they don't have one anymore.

Exactly. Cloudflare had an annoying position, but at least it was a consistent one. Now they have an annoying inconsistent position which makes it much easier to get them to move if you're a large enough party.

> So common carrier status is forfeited if a company reasonably terminates a contract due to the actions of the other party?

Yes. That's why I can trash Verizon or smear Verizon's CEO name from a Verizon phone and Verizon cannot use it to terminate my service. Neither can AT&T.

[Edit: Responding here because HN is saying I'm posting too fast]

Non physical plant phone companies have never had any decisions on them that would affirm if they are or they are not common carriers. Verizon Wireless' data services subs behave as if they were.

Brand X decision is largely misunderstood because it deals with LECs, CLECs and companies that would like to get access to CLEC like benefits without being CLECs. Its scope was incredibly narrow which is why it took that many years for FCC's net neutrality rules be overturned ( and why it was done by the FCC ) and why it allowed FCC rules to stand.

Being disconnected due to utilizing it for harassment is also rather complicated ( and has lots of possible legal theories that have not been tested ):

- it is known that a phone company cannot disconnect the last "live line" service, even for non-payment.

- phone company may restrict one's ability to use the service as long as it continues to provide live line service ( for wireless service it is what allows one to use a locked or administratively disabled phone to make emergency calls ). There are however tons of hoops to jump through.

[Another edit:]

Things become a lot more interesting with MVNO because they are really nothing other than buying clubs even if what they buy is a network access. I believe MVNOs can actually terminate services for any reason as they should not fall under the common carrier label.

This in turn makes me wonder if Verizon/Sprint/ATT/TMO are actually MVNO themselves as I know for certain that entity from which customer's buy services are not the entities that operate it.

Can you find an example of this that isn't a phone company? Common carrier only applies to phone companies, it doesn't apply to CDNs, content providers in general, or websites.

I'll point out too that Verizon or AT&T can terminate services for other things. If your line is used to harass people or make prank phone calls then it can be shut down. Common carrier doesn't mean that they have to allow everyone to use their service.

Every ISP in the United States has common carrier status.

http://www.adweek.com/digital/net-neutrality-fcc-reclassifie...

Note that this is subject to change in the present.

>And because of that move

Why not because of their countless previous similar moves?