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MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for Fnord666

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.

Source: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/07/net-neutrality-rules-are-illegal-according-to-trumps-supreme-court-pick/

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