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from the do-not-pass-go,-do-not-collect-$200 dept.
When the Trump administration killed net neutrality, telecom industry giants convinced them to push their luck and declared that not only would federal regulators no longer try to meaningfully oversee telecom giants like Comcast and AT&T, but that states couldn’t either. They got greedy.
The courts didn’t like that much, repeatedly ruling that the FCC can’t abdicate its authority over broadband consumer protection, then turn around tell states what they can or can’t do.
The courts took that stance again last week, with a new ruling by the US Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit restoring a New York State law (the Affordable Broadband Act) requiring that ISPs provide low-income state residents $15 broadband at speeds of 25 Mbps. The law was blocked in June of 2021 by a US District Judge who claimed that the state law was pre-empted by the federal net neutrality repeal.
Giant ISPs, and the Trump administration officials who love them, desperately tried to insist that states were magically barred from regulating broadband because the Trump administration said so. But the appeals court ruled, once again, those efforts aren’t supported by logic or the law:
“the ABA is not conflict-preempted by the Federal Communications Commission’s 2018 order classifying broadband as an information service. That order stripped the agency of its authority to regulate the rates charged for broadband Internet, and a federal agency cannot exclude states from regulating in an area where the agency itself lacks regulatory authority. Accordingly, we REVERSE the judgment of the district court and VACATE the permanent injunction.”
This ruling is once again good news for future fights over net neutrality and broadband consumer protection, Stanford Law Professor and net neutrality expert Barbara van Schewick notes in a statement:
“Today’s decision means that if a future FCC again decided to abdicate its oversight over broadband like it did in 2017, the states have strong legal precedent, across circuits, to institute their own protections or re-activate dormant ones.”
Telecom lobbyists have spent years lobbying to ensure federal broadband oversight is as captured and feckless as possible. And, with the occasional exception, they’ve largely succeeded. Big telecom had really hoped they could extend that winning streak even further and bar states from standing up to them as well, but so far that really hasn’t gone as planned.
One of the things that absolutely terrifies telecom monopoly lobbyists is the idea of rate regulation, or that government would ever stop them from ripping off captive customers stuck in uncompetitive markets. It’s never been a serious threat on the federal level due to regulatory capture and lobbying, even though it’s thrown around a lot by monopoly apologists as a terrifying bogeyman akin to leprosy.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Wednesday May 08 2024, @08:03PM (2 children)
I'm not an American - it is not 'us'.
I view US politics with the same view that much of the world does now.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 08 2024, @09:14PM (1 child)
Yeah, it is us. We are on the same planet. And your arrogance aside, US politics is not that different from European politics, suffering the same corruption that creates shortages and inflates prices, so save your breath on that. The right wing crazies are gaining popularity there too, because like here, there is no effective opposition, only passive-aggressive whiners.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Wednesday May 08 2024, @09:38PM
You started this political argument. You said:
TFA is a quotation - we don't change what people say. The name was used because it WAS Trump's administration that killed net neutrality. But you got all in a tizz over that. He was not elected by Europeans, so don't go lumping me into your version of 'us'. No matter who is elected in Europe, none of them seem to have visited Jeffrey Epstein's little island, none of them claim they can "grab women by the pussy", and none of them refused to accept the outcome of an election. No other nation in the world is responsible for having elected him. So please don't try spreading the blame. He is a product of the USA. You had better get used to it.
Er, count how many countries in Europe have gone ultra right, and then count how many countries haven't. I would say that some appear to have a fairly effective opposition.