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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: 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.