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Montana to FCC: You Can't Stop Us From Protecting Net Neutrality

posted by martyb on Monday January 29 2018, @08:58PM   
from the waiting-for-48-more-states-to-follow-suit dept.

Fnord666 writes:

The Montana governor's office has a message for the Federal Communications Commission and Internet service providers: the state can't be stopped from protecting net neutrality, and ISPs that don't like it don't have to do business with state agencies.

Governor Steve Bullock signed an executive order to protect net neutrality on Monday, as we reported at the time. But with questions raised about whether Bullock is exceeding his authority, the governor's legal office prepared a fact sheet that it's distributing to anyone curious about potential legal challenges to the executive order.

ISPs are free to violate net neutrality if they only serve non-government customers—they just can't do so and expect to receive state contracts. "Companies that don't like it don't have to do business with the State—nothing stops ISPs from selling dumpy Internet plans in Montana if they insist," the fact sheet says.

The FCC's repeal of net neutrality rules attempts to preempt states and localities from issuing their own similar rules. But Bullock's executive order doesn't directly require ISPs to follow net neutrality rules. Instead, ISPs that accept contracts to provide Internet service to any state agency must agree to abide by net neutrality principles throughout the state.

Source: Ars Technica

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Original Submission

• Re:The state is just as vulnerable to monopoly (Score: 3, Interesting) by insanumingenium on Monday January 29 2018, @11:03PM

  by insanumingenium (4824) on Monday January 29 2018, @11:03PM (#630075) Journal

  The question is can anyone make the overarching promises that Montana requires in the hopes that they are that sole defector, it seems to me, this is analogous to prisoners dilemma. Except it will be iterated among a presumably huge number of connections, and as you point out, the analogy breaks down because there will be cases where they have prior knowledge of competitors choices (though this still doesn't imply collusion, once your competitor has defected once, must agree everywhere in Montana, if they are cooperative once, it suggests they will continue down that path).
  
  The part that neither of us know, is what is the exact value of cooperation and defection. I would expect that the possibility exists to gather more fleece from the sheep than the shepherd.
  
  More likely yet, given telcos long and storied history, some or all agree to Montanas demands and then act in bad faith.

  Parent

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