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President Trump's Supreme Court nominee argued last year that net neutrality rules violate the First Amendment rights of Internet service providers by preventing them from "exercising editorial control" over Internet content.
Trump's pick is Brett Kavanaugh, a judge on the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The DC Circuit twice upheld the net neutrality rules passed by the Federal Communications Commission under former Chairman Tom Wheeler, despite Kavanaugh's dissent. (In another tech-related case, Kavanaugh ruled that the National Security Agency's bulk collection of telephone metadata is legal.)
While current FCC Chairman Ajit Pai eliminated the net neutrality rules, Kavanaugh could help restrict the FCC's authority to regulate Internet providers as a member of the Supreme Court. Broadband industry lobby groups have continued to seek Supreme Court review of the legality of Wheeler's net neutrality rules even after Pai's repeal.
[...] Consumers generally expect ISPs to deliver Internet content in un-altered form. But Kavanaugh argued that ISPs are like cable TV operators—since cable TV companies can choose not to carry certain channels, Internet providers should be able to choose not to allow access to a certain website, he wrote.
"Internet service providers may not necessarily generate much content of their own, but they may decide what content they will transmit, just as cable operators decide what content they will transmit," Kavanaugh wrote. "Deciding whether and how to transmit ESPN and deciding whether and how to transmit ESPN.com are not meaningfully different for First Amendment purposes."
Kavanaugh's argument did not address the business differences between cable TV and Internet service.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by vux984 on Sunday July 15 2018, @06:08AM (12 children)
"ISPs absolutely do and should have that right. And I have the right to not give them my custom for being assholes. That's how freedom and liberty work, you authoritarian dickweed."
So the ISPs should have the right to block stuff, and you should have the right not to give them your business. However, for all practical purposes, no, you don't have that right. Unless you want to stop using the internet or move to another country. Where at best you most likely will get another one to two more ISPs who will fail to live up to your expectations and you are back to nothing.
"The real problem is the monopoly/duopoly bullshit that regulatory capture and other shady practices have landed us with."
This is the correct solution. ISPs IMO should be broken up into common carrier data transit companies, and content/services/hosting providers. The former doesnt anything and doesn't block anything, and is a natural monopoly on last mile. And the latter can be a plethora of competing companies, with low barriers to market entry.
But that isn't what we have, and its not happening anytime soon.
So in the meantime, we have to deal with what we have. And right now what we have is massive vertical telecom oligopoly. And as long as that is what we are stuck with it is wrong to also give them the right to block stuff; while the public has no practical recourse.
"Deal with that problem and all the others go the fuck away out of necessity."
How do we deal with that problem? And how do we solve it without doing something A LOT MORE authoritarian to bring your solution to pass?
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday July 15 2018, @06:21AM (7 children)
Naw. You don't achieve good ends by doing even more evil; you just make shit even worse. We've got two hundred and change years of fine examples of that ourselves and thousands more outside our borders going back.
If you have a problem, fix that problem instead of piling even more complexity on. Say you have a bugged shared library that's widely used. You can either go around to all the packages that use it and either send out pull requests for a workaround, build packages with a workaround for every package yourself, or you can just fix the module so that nobody has to worry about it ever again. Similar situation here.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 15 2018, @06:35AM (5 children)
Ah yes, ignore the massive control the oligarchy has over every aspect of your life and believe in some small grassroots campaign! Oh right, they tried that and municipal broadband was struck down over and over. And people such as yourself applauded as you thought a government agency providing a public service was *GASP* socialism! and would bring about the end times.
Fuck you ya jackass, you don't deserve to even post on this site under the guise of a libertarian. You are no libertarian, and if you truly think you are one then you are truly fucking stupid. Like really dumb, you can't get beyond the most simple premises of your ideology.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday July 15 2018, @06:48AM (2 children)
You troll so enthusiastically but so weakly. It makes me sad for you.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 15 2018, @07:36AM
Well at least it made you sad if not ashamed to be yourself. We'll keep trying but I don't see much hope for you.
I get what is going on, you're riding the outrage wave and trying to spin your own politics inside justified anger. You are the worst but apparently there are enough dissatisfied people around here that will rally to anyone willing to "tell it like it is". You are the Trump if SoylentNews, be proud in your douchery.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 15 2018, @02:27PM
You're quite possibly the most ignorant person in the internet if you think that was trolling. Those of us that have the intelligence of actual adults know perfectly well that what you're pushing doesn't work, never has and never will. People are not rational actors and market forces depend upon customers having multiple options, the time to research those options and the ability to switch to a different option that varies from the other available options.
In short, definitely not when it comes to the internet. I only have 1 option for wired broad band because the building I live in only has 1 option. Moving just to get another ISP is absolutely ridiculous.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 15 2018, @05:21PM
For someone who actually trolls with a good % of your posts it is amusing that you apparently dont quite have the definition locked down. It is ok though, nobidy expects much from a jackass. You will never get that gold jacket! Ya jackass
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 15 2018, @07:05PM
Well, a socialist revolution must have a grassroots origin. However, as you seem to imply, we must always be cautious of how the oligarchy will subvert grassroots movements using COINTELPRO techniques. Examples of successful COINTELPRO deployments include Occupy Wall Street and the TEA Party (be sure to understand the early history and involvement of small l libertarians, the kind of believe all immigrants should be welcomed without arbitrary constructs the create classes of illegal immigration ["big government"], before knee-jerking).
The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) may in fact be such a COINTELPRO effort deployed against the growing awareness of the inherent contradictions of capitalism and growing sympathy for socialism. (This supports the theory of massive control on the part of the oligarchy.)
Above all else, we need a grassroots movement to at least update our voting system to ensure its democratic execution. This is a goal that the Libertarian Party and the Green Party seem to support, and I would hope that as a practical matter, the Socialist Equality Party would also support. Once we have reasserted democracy, then we will be in a position of power to begin to really fix things.
(Score: 3, Funny) by coolgopher on Sunday July 15 2018, @09:41AM
Except a) some bastards will have linked statically, b) more bastards won't bother to upgrade, and c) poor bastards are stuck with a Docker container they can't upgrade...
(Score: 4, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday July 15 2018, @06:47AM (3 children)
My bad, didn't answer your last question. There are plenty of ways you could go about it; some absolutely vile, some less so. For starters, there are plenty of anti-trust laws on the books that could easily be used to claim authority or you could use the Commerce Clause for something that actually is interstate commerce for a change. Myself, were I Grand High Dictator, I'd forbid and invalidate exclusive contracts, exclusive laws, and exclusive architecture (all architecture going forward should be designed in such a way that multiple providers could easily operate on the same hardware in the area). I'd also require anyone who'd already engaged in such foot the bill for revamping the architecture where needed if they cared to continue operating there. Their option entirely.
You might think this sounds very anti-libertarian but it's really not. Libertarians are not anarchists. There are plenty of laws we're peachy keen with. If what you're doing is no-debate-about-it intended to harm others for your own gain, pretty much nobody is going to say we shouldn't have a law against it. And that's exactly what exclusive contracts and regulatory capture are both designed to do.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Knowledge Troll on Sunday July 15 2018, @03:57PM (2 children)
I don't think you can do that - one of the things the Constitution is pretty clear about is that you can't pass a law with consequences for actions in the pass.
Do you want to be a fucking king? Well I suppose the statement Grand High Dictator indicates you aren't saying this is suitable for something like POTUS. But then also it isn't even suitable for the US at all since no retroactive bill would be legal.
What do we do in the US to unfuck it?
(Score: 2) by Leebert on Sunday July 15 2018, @08:01PM
That only applies to criminal laws (see Cader v. Bull [wikipedia.org]). And even in criminal cases, it's not absolute.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday July 16 2018, @05:53PM
Not remotely. I don't even want to admin the site here. I'm sick to death of having responsibility that isn't absolutely necessary for me to take on. That was a "for the sake of argument" clause.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.