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With days to go before his repeal of net neutrality rules, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai issued a press release about five small ISPs that he says were harmed by the rules. Pai "held a series of telephone calls with small Internet service providers across the country—from Oklahoma to Ohio, from Montana to Minnesota," his press release said.
[...] But Pai's announcement offered no data to support this assertion. So advocacy group Free Press looked at the FCC's broadband deployment data for these companies and found that four of them had expanded into new territory. The fifth didn't expand into new areas but it did start offering gigabit Internet service.
[...] According to the ISPs' ex parte filings, the only FCC staffers who participated in Pai's meetings with the ISPs were his spokespeople. The absence of staffers involved in research or policy, combined with the timing of the calls and Pai's press release, suggest that "these meetings occurred for the sake of managing public appearances rather than obtaining meaningful record evidence," Wood wrote.
Source: Ajit Pai offers no data for latest claim that net neutrality hurt small ISPs
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Thursday December 14 2017, @10:49PM (10 children)
Oh really? Please show me where the law [wikipedia.org] allows that? Or the >a href="https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-15-24A1_Rcd.pdf">2015 order from the FCC for that matter?
Go ahead. Cite the clause(s) in either document (which are the law and regulations governing this issue and the definitive sourse) where the FCC gives itself the right to "restrict freedom of speech," or censor *anyone*?
You won't, of course. Because you can't. Because it ain't there.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 14 2017, @11:10PM (7 children)
Here is the EFF, supporting a theoretical net neutrality while opposing the one we ended up with:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/05/net-neutrality-fcc-trojan-horse-redux [eff.org]
(Score: 3, Informative) by NotSanguine on Thursday December 14 2017, @11:34PM (4 children)
This from 2010, BTW. And apparently, you didn't even bother to read (or you didn't understand) the document. EFF endorsed Title II classification, which is what the 2015 order did:
You post a link (which isn't very recent, nor does it refute the argument you replied to) which was never relied upon to define regulation [fcc.gov] or the law [wikipedia.org].
Why are you attempting to derail the discussion with an irrelevant document (that contradicts your assertion), rather than relying the the *actual* regulations and law in question? It makes one question either your motives, your reading comprehension or both.
The latter would be sad and the former is cynical, intellectually dishonest and unethical.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 15 2017, @12:06AM (3 children)
Ideally, we would all know the law. We would read it and learn it in school. We'd get notified of updates.
The reality is that our law is significantly determined by court decisions. These court decisions are technically public, but that doesn't count for much.
Theoretically, you could visit every courthouse and request every legal decision. You could pay the copying fees, which are astronomical in such quantity, and then read through all those court decisions. There are businesses that do exactly this. They sell access to annotated laws. You have to sign up for an expensive service. Lawyers do this. Lawyers don't read the law itself; they read these annotated copies.
So I could read the law, but what use is that? All the people who matter (judges, plaintiffs, defendants, prosecutors...) are using annotated versions that can be quite different from the bare law. When the supreme court strikes something down, the bare law does not change. Instead, the annotation companies just add another annotation.
Likewise, you can read the law, but why should anybody care? Without the annotated version, your interpretation is a wild guess at what might have been intended.
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Friday December 15 2017, @12:42AM (1 child)
You are almost certainly trolling, but I'll feed you just this once.
The 2015 FCC order has been published in US CFR [wikipedia.org].
The Federal Communications Act of 1934 (as amended numerous times) [wikipedia.org] is published in the US Code [wikipedia.org], 47 U.S.C. § 151 et seq.
The courts have repeatedly upheld the concept of Ignorantia juris non excusat except in very narrow edge cases where insufficient (or none) notice of such law is given.
This is not the case here. Not even close.
tl;dr: You're talking out of your ass and it smells that way too.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 15 2017, @02:34AM
See the other anon's response about Lexus Nexus... or are you going to provide free Lexus Nexus access and maybe even an expert to go over it?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 15 2017, @01:08AM
Are such integral parts of a Lawyer's workflow.
You know why? Because the government isn't required to annotate the laws with court cases which affect the interpretation of the laws, or amend the laws to more clearly reflect the law as determined by said court cases.
Furthermore the cases themselves do not have to be made available by the government in a publicly searchable form, unlike, depending on the state, the legal code. The result of this is that even having read the law as written, you might run afoul of laws which no rational being would interpret in the court interpreted manner without having read the defining court cases for a particular law.
As an example, I was tried with a 23109(c) a number of years ago. Said law explained as 'anything not covered in (a) (b) or other sections'. What wasn't defined ANYWHERE in the law was what that entailed. Apparently police interpreted tires squealing is enough for them to ticket you for it, a misdemeanor. So anyone in the state of California driving a pickup in wet weather whose tires squeal, lose traction, etc can be ticketed for a misdeameanor if a cop is present and needs to fill their quota, or just doesn't like you.
The irony of all this is that America was in part founded to get away from the baroque legal system that Britain had, which gave inordinate powers to the crowns equivalent of the judges, prosecutors and police, and yet 250 years later here we are with the same sort of opaque laws, arbitrary enforcement, and tipped scales being used against people, especially the poor, middle class, and weak again.
Perhaps it is time for lady liberty to throw down her scales and take up her sword once again...
(Score: 0, Redundant) by NotSanguine on Thursday December 14 2017, @11:34PM (1 child)
This from 2010, BTW. And apparently, you didn't even bother to read (or you didn't understand) the document. EFF endorsed Title II classification, which is what the 2015 order did:
You post a link (which isn't very recent, nor does it refute the argument you replied to) which was never relied upon to define regulation [fcc.gov] or the law [wikipedia.org].
Why are you attempting to derail the discussion with an irrelevant document (that contradicts your assertion), rather than relying the the *actual* regulations and law in question? It makes one question either your motives, your reading comprehension or both.
The latter would be sad and the former is cynical, intellectually dishonest and unethical.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by NotSanguine on Thursday December 14 2017, @11:38PM
Not sure how this posted twice.
Would someone please mod the second instance 'redundant'.
Thanks.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 15 2017, @03:45AM (1 child)
Title II of the Telecommunications Act of 1996
Under that, an ISP needs a broadcasting license. This can be denied at any time, providing leverage over ISPs.
Here is a walk-through of the scenario. Search down the page for "imagine what happens" if you want to skip to the meat of it.
https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Donald/comments/7hcolp/disturbing_redpill_the_day_obama_nationalized_the/ [reddit.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 15 2017, @04:47AM
ISPs do not require broadcast licenses. They're not broadcasters.
And why you're posting links to crap Alex Jones wouldn't even touch is an quite telling.
Let it all out...JADE HELM! FEMA CONCENTRATION CAMPS! AGENDA 21! SHARIA IS COMING TO USA!
If you're not a moron who's off his meds, I recommend you start taking them again.
Otherwise, fuck off, troll.