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posted by janrinok on Tuesday June 14 2016, @09:12PM   Printer-friendly
from the net-for-all dept.

In a bit of good news for the Obama administration (and most Americans), the U.S. D.C Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the FCC's Open Internet Order rules:

High-speed internet service can be defined as a utility, a federal court has ruled, a decision clearing the way for more rigorous policing of broadband providers and greater protections for web users.

The court's decision upholds the F.C.C. on the declaration of broadband as a utility, the most significant aspect of the rules. That has broad-reaching implications for web and telecommunications companies and signals a shift in the government's view of broadband as a service that should be equally accessible to all Americans, rather than a luxury that does not need close government supervision.

The court's opinion can be found here.

takyon: Also at Tom's Hardware. Alternate link for the Appeals Court decision.


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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Thexalon on Wednesday June 15 2016, @02:46AM

    by Thexalon (636) on Wednesday June 15 2016, @02:46AM (#360341)

    I'll reiterate the position I've had on numerous other issues about the scope of government regulation: To think that government can do no wrong is stupid. To think that government can do no right is equally stupid. If either or both beliefs are widespread in a population, you get bad government policy, because those who create the policy know it won't change anyone's opinion on their performance.

    The reason regulation is bad is that it forces people and organizations to be less efficient - filling out forms, extra expenses, extra equipment, insurance payments, etc all eat into the ability to do useful stuff. The reason regulation is good is that it forces people and organizations to do things that are annoying and/or expensive but also prevent harm to other people e.g. businesses who have to take steps to ensure their employees don't get maimed or killed at work. Sometimes the good outweighs the bad, sometimes it's the other way around, and often it's a matter of opinion which one you're looking at.

    In this case, I think there's a pretty strong argument that regulation is good: The telecoms were very publicly trying to force everybody who wanted a reasonably fast load time for their stuff on most consumer endpoints to pay them protection money. That's bad for all businesses who can't afford to or are unwilling to pay the protection money, and also bad for all the people that wanted whatever services those businesses are providing. The population harmed (telecom company shareholders and management, and possibly the shareholders and management of Netflix, Google, etc who benefit from reduced risk of competition) is significantly smaller than the population helped (everybody else), and the cost to the population harmed is that their quarterly earnings numbers aren't quite as good as they'd otherwise hoped.

    --
    The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
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