A federal appeals court has agreed to halt the reinstatement of net neutrality rules until August 5th, while the court considers whether more permanent action is justified.
It’s the latest setback in a long back and forth on net neutrality — the principle that internet service providers (ISPs) should not be able to block or throttle internet traffic in a discriminatory manner.
The current FCC, which has three Democratic and two Republican commissioners, voted in April to bring back net neutrality. The 3–2 vote was divided along party lines.
Broadband providers have since challenged the FCC’s action, which is potentially more vulnerable after the Supreme Court’s recent decision to strike down Chevron deference — a legal doctrine that instructed courts to defer to an agency’s expert decisions except in a very narrow range of circumstances.
Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Matt Schettenhelm said in a report prior to the court’s ruling that he doesn’t expect the FCC to prevail in court, in large part due to the demise of Chevron.
I’m more of a free market guy than most of y’all, but the internet should clearly be treated as a utility.
Thats what we were pushing for back in 2015
Since you brought it up, why are you a free market person?
I like the free market too, but having a small number of companies control a necessary resource definitely isn’t a free market.
That’s part of the issue with free markets. There’s a missing part to the term that most people drop for some reason, and that would be ‘competition’. Competition doesn’t last very long before there are winners and losers. When it comes to the economy, that means the winner is the largest company and the losers are the companies that were bought or shut down. The end game of free market competition is monopoly. The only reason the competition doesn’t end is because of government regulation to facilitate and uphold capitalist free markets.
Yeah this is exactly what free market lunatics on the right don’t understand. Monopoly isn’t a free market. Free markets simply cannot exist without regulation to prevent unfair business practices.
Also any reasonable economist can tell you that the free market does not solve issues like the tragedy of the commons, because negative externalities are not factored in. It is also the government’s job to ‘internalize’ externalities so companies actually see the costs of, for example, polluting our air and water.
TLDR: free market != unregulated market
I respect your reasoning, though I disagree about free markets being better than a democratically managed economy. I think free markets are inherently oppositional to a cooperative society, and that the myth of the commons was invented as a justification for capitalism.
The only reason the competition doesn’t end is because of government regulation to facilitate and uphold capitalist free markets.
A.K.A. what Adam Smith was really talking about when he mentioned the “invisible hand” (contrary to what the laissez-faire cargo-cultists think).
what Adam Smith was really talking about when he mentioned the “invisible hand”
today, I got a clarified/alternate point of view. today was a good day. thank you, internet friend.
There’s no such thing as a free market.
Yeah, I agree, I think a true free market is basically impossible because there will always be winners and those companies will certainly use their power to stifle competition. Also it is difficult for the consumer to evaluate every product they buy even if there is a number of competitors, so issues like what @Telorand@reddthat.com mentioned (sawdust in food) come up because consumers just don’t have the measurement equipment to check.
I like not having sawdust in my food and legal recourse when a company takes advantage of me, so regulated markets are my preferred method.
What do you like about free markets?
I think a free market in a given sector can encourage innovation. That’s not to say all sectors need innovation, there’s not a lot of innovation to be had in many sectors, like providing water, or housing, and those probably don’t need to be a free market. They could be provided by the government for example.
I could be convinced that some kind of hybrid market would work, though I’d have to see some reasonable examples of how we’d prevent monopolies and corporate collusion/racketeering.
I think that’s mostly driven by regulatory capture and the fact that lobbyists can drive regulation. If our government actually worked for the people, we could actually enforce monopoly laws, and the SEC (or equivalent in countries besides the US) would actually prevent mergers that threaten competition. The government is supposed to prevent this kind of behavior, but they have basically been bought out.
As for how to stop that from happening, I’m not sure. I think it would require at least getting rid of the two party system, because that stifles competition in the governance space. That means that even though there are probably lots of voters who would vote for a real candidate who would break monopolies, there is no such candidate available. But in order for that to work we would have to switch to a different voting method, like ranked-choice (or one of the even more fair ones).
Yeah random guy on the internet, justify yourself
That’s not what I asked them to do. I disagree with free markets, but that doesn’t mean I’m resistant to learning from other people’s perspectives.
I didn’t mean you were, that just sounded strangely judgemental for a question asked to a random person on the internet who you probably never saw before and will most likely ignore it
I get it, but maybe they won’t. They definitely will ignore my question if I never ask!
Telecos hate the idea of free market on the internet when they are providing the service.
From their perspective, they are entitled to that cut… Why should Google get it all?
Maybe because we’ve been paying them a tax since the early 2000’s to provide fiber broadband to the majority of Americans, which they have pocketed and refused to actually build any infrastructure to support this?
Critical thinking has been spotted!
Telcos are the worst of corporate parasites, at least telsa built a car and SpaceX built a rocket, and
Boeing can build a plane
Depends on the telco. I’m using a small local ISP that supports net neutrality and provides 10Gbps for $40/month. Perfect. Very grateful that I can use them instead of AT&T or Xfinity/Comcast.
I feel like everyone within developed countries should offer everyone a bare minimum free internet access. Like, even if it’s as slow as dialup, at least it would still be access.
Then, if you want high speed internet, which I’m sure most people would want, then you pay monthly for that of course.
But this whole thing they’re doing now, where they can throttle or even block sites at their own discretion for paying customers, well that’s just totally back-asswards…
From the outside it really seems that a large amount of the USA administration is actively working against the USA’s interests. Which sounds weird.
The GOP is doing everything it can to fuck up our government in favor of corporate and foreign interests: They are literally selling America out for a quick buck while all their rich asshole friends enjoy even more obscene wealth.
It’s seems that way from the inside, too.
It depends on how you define “the USA”. If you mean the people of this country, then absolutely they are working against us. If you mean the people with loads and loads of money, then no, they are working as hard as they fucking can for them.
“The administration “ usually means the Executive Branch, the FCC, which in this case is trying to do a good thing. Net neutrality has long been supported by a majority of voters, and has been active on party lines: Democrat majority is trying to do the right thing for their constituents
In this case corporations affected sued to overturn and the court, the Judicial Branch, issued a stay of enforcement until the final ruling.
This is very much a problem of corporations having too much say, and one of the parties protecting corporations over citizens
It is weird to observe from the inside as well.
I mean, if you vote for the GOP their platform is literally “me doing less work is good for you.”
Imagine if you hired ANY professional under those terms “hi, yeah I’m Jack, the plumber. Listen, you don’t want another bathroom, you want fewer bathrooms. Can’t have the whole house smelling like shit can we? You understand.”
you know… I don’t think I could pick many better ways to remind a population that they are nothing more than chattel.
superior quality rulling there, supreme court.
/s on that last sentence, cuz you never know.
it literally costs nothing to ignore the supreme court and lower courts people.
WHAT THE FUCK!
T mobile already shaping the hell out of my internet. If I download a Netflix episode of a show without my vpn on, it could take like 15 minutes. With my vpn on it takes like 1 minute.
The supremes are debating if green lights are legal. For now drive anyway you’d like guys and gals. Also you may rape each other while running red lights. The supremes haven’t discussed if they will report you to Cuba or not for that.
Ya know now that you mention it, I don’t recall Congress ever explicitly delegating the selection of the “go” and “stop” colors to any government entity. Wonder if you could now use this as a defense against running a red light…
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The current FCC, which has three Democratic and two Republican commissioners, voted in April to bring back net neutrality.
Broadband providers have since challenged the FCC’s action, which is potentially more vulnerable after the Supreme Court’s recent decision to strike down Chevron deference — a legal doctrine that instructed courts to defer to an agency’s expert decisions except in a very narrow range of circumstances.
Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Matt Schettenhelm said in a report prior to the court’s ruling that he doesn’t expect the FCC to prevail in court, in large part due to the demise of Chevron.
A panel of judges for the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals said in an order that a temporary “administrative stay is warranted” while it considers the merits of the broadband providers’ request for a permanent stay.
In the meantime, the court requested the parties provide additional briefs about the application of National Cable & Telecommunications Association v. Brand X Internet Services to this lawsuit.
Brand X is a 2005 case in which the Supreme Court ruled that the FCC had lawfully interpreted the Communications Act to exclude cable broadband providers from the definition of “telecommunications services.” At the time, SCOTUS said the lower court should have followed Chevron and deferred to the agency’s interpretation.
The original article contains 341 words, the summary contains 211 words. Saved 38%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Somebody needs to put Sarah McLachlan’s Angel over the American flag and start posting it every time Anti-Chevron is used to break the government.
