They refused to classify the providers in a way that gave them express statutory authority to promulgate these regulations, and the court called them on it.
I want to see this happen, but the right way is for the FCC to stop pussyfooting around and classify them as common carriers, which they are, so it can regulate them as such.
They are just afraid of the political whining.
The problem you have here is simple: The messaging is very hard to get to politicians in a way that makes it clear what a big deal this is, and how bad it's been.
They have no concept of things like "broadband speeds". On one side, they get told by the telecom union, verizon, comcast, ex-FCC chairs who are now lobbying, etc, that "if you impose these rules, we'll lose jobs and money, and it'll make the world a worse place. Plus, regulation has been stifling us for years. We want to do amazing things like increase speeds in your area, but we can't afford to invest if we have all these regulations, and if these guys won't pay their fair share" (The telecoms have their own made up presentations about how they really didn't waste billions of dollars and give people nothing in return but higher prices)
There is a lot inaccurate with this message, but it's still hard to counter. When what you mostly have is industry groups and tech companies arguing on the other side, it is hard for politicians to not believe their main beef is "we don't want to pay for this".
The "consumers are already paying these costs, people shouldn't pay twice" argument doesn't really fly.
If it affected politicians and their constituents ability to watch football, this would be easy.
Instead, it usually seems like it just affects some confusing and far away thing they don't want to bother understanding, or worse, take the telecom companies side on.
This would be a lot easier if there were millions of tech people arguing on the right side here, but that never actually happens
(I'll also point out Google took a huge hit back then for getting what it could out of this, when it was fairly clear even then that the FCC's position was going to be a loser in court. It was raked over the coals by everyone, including the same organizations now commenting on this court decision saying how the FCC should do something different. It was clear the FCC wasn't going to change its mind then, and Google at least got people something out of this nothing. Of course, i'm quite biased here).
Effective lobbying organizations have learned to speak the language. Environmental organizations these days aren't appealing to the duty of people to preserve the environment for future generations. They're talking in terms of externalized costs and how allowing pollution undermines economic efficiency.
From the FCC's point of view, the decision not to regulate the internet was considered a huge win. To this day, they crow about how abstaining from applying the heavy-handed common carrier regulations to internet service allowed it to blossom into what it is today. It's considered a massive success for policy that favors deregulation and private investment.
You can't get anywhere in this sort of environment speaking the language of "neutrality" and "openness." Post-Clinton, nobody in Washington speaks that language anymore.
And to be perfectly fair to everyone involved, nobody wants ISPs classified as common carriers, not with all the additional baggage that entails. Maybe Congress needs to legislate to give the FCC authority to implement certain "light touch" regulations over internet providers, but nobody wants to go back to the bad old days of oppressive 1950 s-1970's style regulatory burden.
When you say " To this day, they crow about how abstaining from applying the heavy-handed common carrier regulations to internet service allowed it to blossom into what it is today."
You hit the nail on the head here. Of course, this mixes up correlation and causation, but yes, the FCC somehow believes they played some role in all of this, when in fact, things happened despite them, not because of it...
The carrier have no reason to negotiate any regulation at all. Everyone is willing to give them everything they want, for nothing. The only thing that scares them is the uncertainty of courts, and they are doing wonderfully there :)
So, according to you allowing a light weight to fight a heavy weight is ethical? In my view, it is not. Big corporations enjoy already great advantages that come from their size. If we let this go, we'll turn an oligopoly into a monopoly.
So imagine now if some ISP will have to BUY access to Netflix, Google, etc. So say 5 years from now, 1 carrier gives you Bing, Yahoo and Twitter while the other one gives you only Google. If you take the former you'll have to buy a proxy into Google because Google didn't pay the carrier and the carrier doesn't want free rides on his network. This could deteriorate faster then we might dare to think.
It's neither ethical nor unethical, that's all I'm saying. It's like saying "tax-cuts are unethical because of one thing or another". You can try to argue that, sure, but I think it'd be irrational.
By the way, I do support Net Neutrality because it's a good policy that makes everyone better off.
In some philosophical traditions making everyone better off is the actual definition of ethical.
Everyone except telecoms (and possibly the big guys who could afford the telecom toll).
Introducing extra data fees isn't necessarily the walled garden, I suppose, but depending on the structure, it walks us back some degree on the spectrum between the web and AOL.
Net neutrality does nothing for rich or poor. The rich already benefit from better connectivity and internet access. Net neutrality doesn't automatically make internet cheaper either, in fact, it may make it more expensive because the telecoms cannot complement their internet fees with money collected from Youtube and Netflix for priority access. So at least theoretically, net neutrality could imply higher internet fees for the end-user.
I don't know which way you lean ideologically, but your line of reasoning is similar to arguing that cable packages are unethical, because the rich have better access and selection than the poor. You can argue it, but I'd disagree. The USA, along with most of the world, has a mixed economy which has capitalism as its foundation, complemented by a strong government which provides for common infrastructure, safety net, and regulation. There's a very good reason for having such a system, but it does mean that there will exist poor and rich (and everything in-between). Saying something is unethical just because there would be a difference between what the rich and the poor would have available to them is irrational. It most certainly doesn't apply to Net Neutrality.
//
For the record, I do support Net Neutrality, but I wouldn't characterize it as a moral or ethical issue. I see it as just good policy because it levels the playing field between big and small players, which makes everyone better off (rich and poor). Microsoft, Netflix, Google, Apple, Amazon are going to be fine in a non-net-neutral world, startups and mid-sized companies will be at a disadvantage.
They should be given two options: 1) open network and they can keep all their extras like security or 2) close network but no extras.
HD Video streaming services and software downloads (e.g. via Steam or Xbox) are probably the things most affect by Net Neutrality, especially since telecoms have competing services and those types of services benefit immensely from unlimited caps and lots of bandwidth.
So I'm still confused as to what argument you're trying to make. You're hand-waving quite a bit trying to position it as a grave ethical issue and I just don't see it. Again, I think Net Neutrality should be the law of the land. It benefits everyone (except telecoms) and it's been a huge success so far. Let's keep it.
But, even if we were to take your assumptions at face value, I'm not sure how you gloss over other details (such as their ability to price competitors like Netflix out of the market or essentially hold their users for ransom to the highest bidder).
Given that they are quasi-monopolies in most cases, these are certainly issues that deal with consumer choice on one end and access to opportunity on the other (i.e. for content providers, startups, etc.). In other words, these are issues of fairness. How can something be both made willfully unfair, yet be ethical? Would you not agree that fairness as a principle is morally right? That is the definition of ethical.
You made the argument in another comment that it's no more a matter of ethics than is raising taxes. But, certainly you can envision a scenario under which taxes can be raised in a manner and/or at the behest of certain groups which would make it unethical?
If none of this makes sense to you, then therein lies the divergence. It's one regarding the basic definition of ethical.
>How can something be both made willfully unfair, yet be ethical?
Is it unethical that Yankees spend twice the league average on their ball-club because it is most certainly unfair. After all, not every team gets to be based in New York.
And I'd be careful with words like 'fairness'. A socialist and a libertarian will have vastly different definitions of what is 'fair' and what is 'unfair'. To you it's unfair that Netflix may get priced out by a Telecom, but then again, Netflix didn't spend billions building and maintaining the infrastructure, as well as acquiring all those customers. Telecoms got subsidies to build their infrastructure, but they never agreed to Net Neutrality. Is that fair?
Yes, they are quasi-monopolies, and they are regulated as such. There are things they can do, and there are things they can't do. The things they can't do aren't things that are necessarily unethical. They are just regulations passed by democratically elected representatives.
So why is it so wrong in treating Net Neutrality as just a legislative issue, as opposed to a violation of a non-existent human right?
>But, certainly you can envision a scenario under which taxes can be raised in a manner and/or at the behest of certain groups which would make it unethical
Yes, I can envision such a scenario but low or high tax policy still isn't intrinsically an ethical issue. All you've argued is that it may be unethical to cheat the system in order to pass your pet tax policy. So yes, measures which are used to pass pro or anti net neutrality laws may be unethical.
Neither did the telecoms spend billions in developing movie streaming software, yet they benefited from all the content consumption.
> Telecoms got subsidies to build their infrastructure, but they never agreed to Net Neutrality. Is that fair?
Neither did they explicitly assert that they will be net-biased.
If the net wasnt neutral there would be no google we'd all be stuck using yahooor dogpile. The net and all its services would look a lot more like cable was begining to. I find it hard to take anyone seriously when they are defending companies that would have you pay in the blood of your first born if they could get away with it. You think the net would have gone mainstream? You think that facebook would exist? Amazon?
The world has changed with open unfiltered acess to the internet, anything trying to lock it down and monopolise the network transmissions at a base level is incredibly unethical and an attack on so many parts if your life now.
Its too much of a burden on carriers to be regulated like they should be? Fuck me man, its too much of a burden on the world at large not to.
The fcc needs to call them carriers, be done with it, fix the pricing, fix the dodgy dealing and if need be deregulate the issues that seem to be getting isps in such a huf.
We have heavily subsidized these companies. It's a bit of a rouse to say that they never agreed to Net Neutrality so shouldn't be beholden to it. The need for Net Neutrality arose because they wanted to go beyond their purview and accrete more power unto themselves. They are supposed to be serving customers, not holding access to them for ransom. Yes, they have invested in their infrastructures, and their reward is that they get to charge customers to access it, which they do handsomely.
BTW, your question implying some unfairness to the ISPs goes beyond a question of ethics (on which we'll agree to disagree) to an argument against Net Neutrality. Maybe that's where your real disagreement lies and the question of whether it's an ethical issue really isn't "all you're arguing".
It's comments like these that make me not like net neutrality. There is no way you are going to stop people who spend more money from being able to enjoy better Internet connections.
On the other hand, ISPs ought to be stopped, in general, from discriminating against traffic based on a) their desire to sell their own service that competes with it, or b) who you are connecting to.
Agreed, so there's no need to give them more ways to enhance their advantage. They are too far ahead already. Because that's what is all about...
Your interpretation is ... strange. The big telecoms are publicly owned. So those "rich people who own the ISPs" are shareholders?
I'm pretty sure zem referred to "rich" and "poor" consumers of internet services. Not telecoms, not corporations.
Followed by the tort lawyers saturation bombing ads for class action lawsuits alleging breach of contract and tortious interference in contracts.
You can't prioritise some packets without disadvantaging others. Unless the rules were crafted very, very carefully (and, let's face it, do we really think that would happen), I could easily envisage major connectivity providers auctioning off a handful of "prime video streamer" slots to companies like YouTube and Netflix, leaving other companies' services unusable. And that's just what I can imagine - the unintended consequences that I can't imagine are potentially far, far worse.
We got from 14.4k dial-up to multi-megabit always-on broadband (both fixed-line AND mobile) without compromising on net neutrality. The potential disadvantages far outweigh the claimed advantages.
- Allow for consolidation of radio stations (and thus, the meteoric rise of ClearChannel)
- Allow for consolidation of telecommunications companies (and thus, almost the major phone service companies are the progeny of the Baby Bells)
It also did some very good things, like requiring entrants into the data services market to interconnect with incumbents.
But it also allowed telecoms to rip off the USGOV and taxpayers in extraordinary lengths (see previous discussion on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7021057 )
Note that Silberman's dissent was because Silberman thought the whole Open Internet Order should have been struck down (including the disclosure requirements), while Rogers and Tatel only thought that that the requirements they characterize as "common carrier" requirements (non-discrimination and non-blocking) should be struck down.
So this wasn't "Clinton appointees vote against FCC, Reagan appointee backs FCC".
The DC Court handles all of these big, Federal cases that make the top of HN. A President's impact on the DC Court is almost as important as their impact on the Supreme Court.
No, it doesn't. The Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit handles appeals of federal regulatory agency decisions, but -- while this FCC decision is an example of those -- you don't see a lot of them make the top of HN. Most of the "big, federal" cases that make the top of HN are either:
1) criminal cases, which go to trial in the District Court in which the crime occurred, and for appeal to the Circuit Court in which that District Court is located (which might happen to be the DC Circuit if the trial was originally in the District Court for the District of Columbia, but usually that's not the case); or
2) coyright cases, which again go through any of the District Courts for trial, and the corresponding Circuit Court for appeals; or
3) patent cases, which go to trial in the District Court in which the crime occurred, and for appeal to the Court of Appeals for the Federal (not DC) Circuit.
While the DC Circuit is very important, its not that commonly involved in cases that make the front page of HN.
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142405270230393690... "For the 12-months ending in September, the D.C. Circuit had 149 appeals filed per active judge. By comparison, the 11th Circuit had 778 appeals filed per active judge for the same period... The national average of appeals per active judge is 383."
These things matter.
The D.C. Circuit's docket consists very disproportionately of highly complex regulatory appeals, which take much more time than simpler types of cases. These cases are not only often very factually complex, but of a nature that leaves more scope for appellate review. Roughly speaking, when a circuit court reviews the factual findings or discretionary actions of a lower court, it does so deferentially. E.g. an appellate court reviews sentences imposed by a district court only for abuse of discretion. However, a circuit court reviews the legal conclusions of a lower court from scratch (de novo). Regulatory appeals in the D.C. Circuit are much more likely to turn on complex issues of legal interpretation that the appellate court must review from scratch, than on factual disputes that the appellate court need only review for clear error.
The D.C. Circuit has 10% criminal cases. 5 circuits have above 25% criminal cases. The D.C. Circuit has over 30% administrative cases, most circuits have under 10%. The D.C. Circuit has almost no private prisoner cases (cases by prisoners against state officials for violations of rights), while most circuits have over 15%. The D.C. Circuit has over 20% U.S. civil cases (civil cases in which the U.S. is a defendant), while most circuits have under 5%.
Even within those divisions there are relevant distinctions. An appeal from the Board of Immigration Appeals is an "administrative" case, but it's a much simpler matter to resolve, usually, than say a challenge to an EPA regulation. So while the 9th Circuit has almost 30% "administrative cases," each of those are likely much simpler to resolve than each administrative case on the D.C. Circuit's docket (not many people are getting deported from D.C.)
Of course, I'm not at all surprised to see a News Corp outlet overlook a critical distinction that is inconvenient for the propaganda interests of the Republican Party.
As an aside, why do you say that the DC Circuit is "underworked" instead of saying that the 11th Circuit is "overworked"?
If you're right that the 11th Circuit is overworked, then that point actually cuts against your argument: let's put more judges there where they need more help, and not the DC Circuit.
The system is, we have these seats, created by acts of Congress, which need to be filled. The President nominates candidates -- ideally candidates recommended by the Congressmen in the region, for regional appointments -- and the Senate vets them, and confirms or denies their appointment. The Republicans, however, aren't playing fair: they have been refusing to even allow votes on the candidates, even while admitting the candidates are qualified. Furthermore, they are not cooperating in the nomination process, refusing to recommend candidates to the President.
It's not fair, and everything after that is camouflage. If it was really a concern about the workload of the judiciary, and act of Congress could add or remove seats as necessary. But it isn't, and Congress isn't acting -- they are refusing to act, never in good faith and rarely at all.
Of course, such a decision would itself be challenged, with ISPs arguing that what they do is not "telecommunications" as defined in the Telecommunications Act (I'm not saying this argument would be correct, but its not an uncontroversial position that the conflict between the order and the law can be remedied by simply reframing the order without a change in the law.)
These things matter.