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The Trump administration is suing California to quash its new net neutrality law
The Trump administration said Sunday it will sue California in an effort to block what some experts have described as the toughest net neutrality law ever enacted in the United States, setting up a high-stakes legal showdown over the future of the Internet.
California on Sunday became the largest state to adopt its own rules requiring Internet providers like AT&T, Comcast and Verizon to treat all web traffic equally. Golden State legislators took the step of writing their law after the Federal Communications Commission scrapped nationwide protections last year, citing the regulatory burdens they had caused for the telecom industry.
Mere hours after California's proposal became law, however, senior Justice Department officials told The Washington Post they would take the state to court on grounds that the federal government, not state leaders, has the exclusive power to regulate net neutrality. DOJ officials stressed the FCC had been granted such authority from Congress to ensure that all 50 states don't seek to write their own, potentially conflicting, rules governing the web.
Also at Ars Technica, TechDirt, and Politico.
Previously: California Gov. Signs Nation’s Strictest Net Neutrality Rules Into Law
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @04:03PM (1 child)
Ah, been to busy testing in MiB/s lately.
Strange that you use the same argument: Netflix et al already paid for it. And obviously they bought much higher upload speeds than that rural guy someplace unknown. Yes I'm aware there are technical limitations that may mean I'm not getting 30Mbps to anywhere. However if the other side paid for 30Mbps upload and I paid for 30Mbps download, and I'm using enough parallel connections, I'm expecting to get that 30Mbps (ok maybe 29 and some change) even to some poor rural backwater town in the middle of nowhere on the other side of the planet. Note that I'm not saying that I get 1ms latency to India, I didn't buy a 1ms latency line to everywhere, I did buy bandwidth capacity of 30Mbps.
That's how the streaming apps work, they use bandwidth to buffer enough of the video so if your latency spikes for a few seconds you don't notice it. Even if their latency is 10s; if you start and buffer 20seconds with enough bandwidth you shouldn't have a problem the rest of the movie. Now I don't know if Netflix/Youtube bought enough upload capacity, but since to my knowledge no ISP has ever complained about that, I can assume they bought plenty.
Yes, youtube et al also placed equipment at the ISP's to improve their service even more. (Having to wait 20s to start a video would be a hassle to many)
The other problem you mention is "voluntary" trade. If you think your contract with your ISP is voluntary trade, well, I'm not living in the US, so good luck with that. Hint, try negotiating a small contract term. E.g. revoking their right to change the contract at will. I'm sure you can voluntarily change to the other ISP with the same insane contract terms.
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @04:20PM
Your scenario only makes sense if you're both connecting via the same ISP, and if the ISP has enough buffering to relay the data between you to. Your position is based on a world that DOES NOT EXIST. That's why ISPs sell "up to" some bandwidth.
Actually, Netflix is famous for having true streaming. Until recently, they didn't really do any significant buffering, relying instead on being able to switch on the fly to streams of varying average bit rates.
With regard to voluntary trade, all I hear from you is "I'm entitled to MOAR!!!!11111". That being said, you should know that telecoms behave so badly in part because they have been blessed by local governments to be legally coercive monopolies. Government. GOVERNMENT.