[HN Gopher] U.S. Appeals Court Strikes Down FCC's Net Neutrality...
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U.S. Appeals Court Strikes Down FCC's Net Neutrality Rules
Author : pseudolus
Score : 69 points
Date : 2025-01-02 20:05 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.tvtechnology.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.tvtechnology.com)
| treetalker wrote:
| Several related cases; the opinion in one of them is here:
| https://www.opn.ca6.uscourts.gov/opinions.pdf/25a0002p-06.pd...
|
| Lousy reporting: although it quotes the opinion and links to
| other articles on the same website, the article doesn't bother to
| cite the opinion or even mention the name of the case, let alone
| link to the source.
| fooey wrote:
| the NYT article links to the same PDF you provided
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/02/technology/net-neutrality...
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Huge pet peve of mine. Reporters incentive are to keep you on
| site, not inform.
|
| It is particularly egregious when reporting on governmental
| public safety announcement and laws. Reporting buries the web
| results, but fails to cite it.
|
| I'm generally a libertarian, but would be in favor of required
| linking of government PSAs and laws
| billyp-rva wrote:
| It's a sad commentary that, because of how concentrated web
| traffic is today, net neutrality feels like an antiquated
| concern.
| orev wrote:
| The idea that Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc. have made Net
| Neutrality irrelevant is ridiculous, and is a result of a
| directed campaign by ISPs to distract attention from them and
| onto these other companies.
|
| With NN in place, there's nothing at the network level that
| prevents a competitor to them from rising up. Without NN, ISPs
| can make deals to speed/slow/block traffic to different
| destinations, which would have a real effect on possible
| newcomers that challenge the incumbents.
| billyp-rva wrote:
| > is a result of a directed campaign by ISPs to distract
| attention from them and onto these other companies.
|
| I've come to this conclusion because NN is effectively dead
| at the link level, not the ISP level. Try posting a link to
| the web on any of the big social sites, and you'll be
| instantly downranked.
| orev wrote:
| Whatever problem that is, it's not Net Neutrality. NN is
| about ISPs being able to do things like sell different
| service levels, like package A includes access to Facebook
| and Google only, package B includes package A plus
| Instagram and Netflix, package C includes package B plus
| TikTok, etc. Or doing things like making their own video
| service while making Netflix unusably slow.
|
| Not saying your issue also isn't valid, but it can be
| addressed by market forces when enough people get sick of
| that type of behavior (like Twitter/X) and move to
| something else (like Bluesky). Most people don't have any
| real choice between ISPs (through monopolies that have been
| granted to them for decades by local governments), and
| therefore there needs to be some additional legal
| protection against that type of behavior.
|
| Trying to lump them both together under NN is part of the
| playbook that Big ISP has been using for years to muddy the
| issue.
| kristopolous wrote:
| I like how they quoted Brendan Carr - he's one of those people
| who think anything done in the public interest, to protect
| people's rights, increase transparency or to hold power brokers
| accountable is, without exaggeration, evil tyrannical overreach.
|
| These kinds of people talk about personal responsibility because
| they don't believe in social or civic responsibility.
|
| I mean don't get me wrong, he's ok with the government paying for
| things to gift them away to corporations, or bailing them out or
| banning things like municipal broadband and consumer disclosure
| or legislation that enables dark money to move around - that's
| apparently good government doing good things.
|
| It's like he reads Philip K Dick for inspiration of how to
| structure a society.
| malfist wrote:
| He's not nearly that principled. Private capital acting in a
| way he doesn't agree with politically is wrong according to
| him. See his complaints about Big tech "censorship" of
| misinformation and Harris's appearance on SNL
| kristopolous wrote:
| His idea of censorship is when social media takes steps in
| the public interest and their civic responsibility of
| providing a social good seriously.
|
| Meta is trying to avoid another Myanmar catastrophe and he
| wants to use the power of the state to ensure no responsible
| actions for the public good will be taken.
|
| It's ideologically consistent. Anything acting for the
| betterment of society is somehow communism
| empath75 wrote:
| It's hard to get really worked up about courts falling on one
| side or the other of an argument between multibillion dollar
| corporations about how to allocate bandwidth costs.
| RiverCrochet wrote:
| There's a lot of concern about the lack of net neutrality being
| unfair in the sense it gives providers the ability to make
| traffic to sites slower, but does not having net neutrality
| also mean they can simply refuse to send/receive to specific
| domains or IP addresses?
| wmf wrote:
| Technically yes, but this has been done very few times in
| history.
| RiverCrochet wrote:
| Well, it's definitely a new historical era in which old
| precedents are being thrown out and new ones made. I'm sure
| anti-piracy organizations will use this to their advantage
| soon to make a deal with ISPs to block suspected piracy
| sites. Also I do wonder if we'll see U.S. ISPs refuse to
| allow access to certain sites based on religious freedom
| grounds soon.
| tptacek wrote:
| I don't think any US conception of "net neutrality" was
| going to protect the suspected piracy sites.
| treetalker wrote:
| A grander theme is seeing the effects of the _Loper Bright_
| decision and the end of _Chevron_ (and certain other, but not
| all, forms of) deference to administrative agencies.
| tptacek wrote:
| Any thoughts about why I should, on the advent of a second
| Trump administration, be dismayed about a lack of deference
| to executive agencies?
| timmytokyo wrote:
| The inability of executive agencies to create regulations
| will extend beyond one presidential administration. Given
| that conservative administrations tend to favor cutting
| regulations anyway, this jurisprudence will likely impact
| liberal administrations more than conservative ones.
| yesco wrote:
| I've always felt the FCC was an inappropriate path for enforcing
| this. Ideally it would be powers granted to the FTC either
| through legislation or potentially through existing powers they
| might already have in this domain.
|
| The FCC's jurisdiction on this was already shaky even before
| Chevron was overturned, I think the moment activism was pushed in
| this direction net neutrality was doomed a decade of unending
| lawsuits. Even if they somehow made it passed the courts, I'm not
| quite convinced the FCC would be motivated to actually do much
| about this even with a sympathetic administration. Consider that
| prior to the internet, they were pretty much created to do the
| opposite of what people want from net neutrality.
|
| These are just my armchair thoughts though.
| fooey wrote:
| The fun tradeoff here is since the courts determined the feds
| can't regulate it, the states are allowed to instead, with
| California and New York already taking the lead, and are _much_
| more consumer oriented than anything that could be done
| federally.
| granzymes wrote:
| The Federal government _can_ regulate broadband providers,
| just not as telecommunications providers (subject to common
| carrier requirements) under the Telecommunications Act of
| 1996. Congress could update the law if it wanted to.
|
| If the court had held otherwise, the Federal common carrier
| requirements would have preempted any common carrier duties
| imposed by California and New York. Since today the 6th
| Circuit says the FCC does not have that power (because
| broadband providers offer _information_ services and not
| _telecommunications_ services), California and New York are
| welcome to impose those duties within their state boundaries
| (as long as they don 't step on any other areas of Federal
| preemption).
| vel0city wrote:
| > because broadband providers offer information services
| and not telecommunications services
|
| This is where I highly disagree with the opinions of this
| court decision. My ISP is absolutely providing me
| telecommunications services, not information service.
|
| For practically all the "information" I receive, my ISP is
| not "generating, acquiring, storing, transforming,
| processing, retrieving, utilizing, or making available
| information via telecommunications". That maybe sometimes I
| might land on some webpage hosted by my ISP is
| inconsequential to the services I am paying for, that's not
| the service I'm paying for. In the end I'm paying for them
| to give me the ability to telecommunicate with a server
| hosted by someone else which then generates, processes,
| retrives, that information.
|
| My ISP is not the information service which lets me post
| here. Hacker News is an information service acquiring,
| storing, transforming, processing, and retrieving the data
| I request. My ISP is only used for me to talk to the Hacker
| News webserver.
|
| https://www.congress.gov/104/plaws/publ104/PLAW-104publ104.
| p...
|
| I truly don't understand how anyone who can even vaguely
| understand how ISPs work and reads this law could say ISPs
| aren't telecommunications providers and are instead
| information service providers. Other than maybe big bags of
| cash that makes people's reading comprehension a little
| loose.
| overstay8930 wrote:
| Which is exactly how it's supposed to work in the first
| place, individual states are really the only entities that
| even have the power to enforce any sort of regulation here
| anyways. Telecom was always handled by states, the feds only
| stepped in when it was inter-state.
|
| This was going to happen regardless, T-Mobile basically threw
| throttling in their face and they had no choice but to
| pretend it was fine, and they'll be doing the same with home
| internet soon enough (followed by CableCos in non-competitive
| areas).
| Terr_ wrote:
| > Which is exactly how it's supposed to work in the first
| place
|
| True, but that was also when _riding on a horse_ was the
| fastest way over land and a much much greater proportion of
| stuff was within state-lines.
|
| In some alternate universe where the telegraph had already
| been invented, all those states may have entered into some
| sort of special telegram compact, and our "how it's
| supposed to work in the first place" would be rather
| different.
|
| Actually, in _this_ universe something similar did happen:
| The federal government was explicitly authorized to run a
| nationwide postal service, which stands out in a
| Constitution that was otherwise mostly about what it
| _couldn 't_ do.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| Net neutrality was never about mobile data.
|
| Unlike terrestrial internet, you can't just build more
| capacity with over the air data transmissions. You have to
| have more agressive network and QOS management for cellular
| networks.
|
| Besides that, the true argument for net neutrality was not
| to unfairly help or hurt businesses. T-mobile 0 rated all
| of the streaming services that participated in the program
| and were not asking for money for it. Even though they
| didn't advertise it, if you dug deep enough, you could find
| the list including some porn sites.
|
| Someone commented on HN a while back that they were able to
| get their 50 stream non profit 0 rated.
| datadrivenangel wrote:
| FTC would make more sense, and now that this is getting
| devolved to the states I expect we'll see the major telecoms
| lobbying for regulation so that they don't have the hassle of
| implementing differing policies by state and the likely painful
| regulations that they'll get in more progressive states.
| timewizard wrote:
| > Consider that prior to the internet, they were pretty much
| created to do the opposite of what people want from net
| neutrality.
|
| You can scale broadband almost infinitely. You _cannot_ scale
| phone service or television or radio the same way. There are
| simple limits on physical space and on carrier allocations that
| require there to be a licensing body. The FCC is required to be
| reasonable and non-discriminatory and broadcasters are required
| to serve their local communities directly. The FCC can only
| license broadcasters and can place no limits on receivers at
| all. This is because these airwaves collectively belong to the
| people.
|
| It was created to serve these purposes. None of these are the
| "opposite" of net neutrality in any way whatsoever.
| Drunk_Engineer wrote:
| Mobile broadband uses public airwaves, which is entirely FCC
| jurisdiction.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| Short version: They killed it because of "Loper Bright" which
| killed the Chevron Deference.
|
| In other words: Until recently, US executive agencies were given
| a lot of leeway in creating regulations that align with their
| mandate from Congress. This leeway was struck down by the Roberts
| Supreme Court, insisting that courts can reign in executive
| agencies and keep them from operating with a broad mandate.
|
| This court doesn't say Net Neutrality is bad or unconstitutional.
| It says that, under the new precedent set by the Roberts Supreme
| Court, the FCC does not have the authority it claims to have in
| regulating ISPs in the same way as a phone company.
|
| If Congress were to pass a law that said the FCC had the
| authority, or that net neutrality should be instated explicitly,
| it would happen.
| rqtwteye wrote:
| Has there been another Supreme Court that has overturned as
| many precedents than the Roberts court? It looks to me that
| this court will have a huge impact far into the future.
|
| They are less activist when it comes to ethics rules though.
| The Clarence Thomas situation is ridiculous.
| int_19h wrote:
| https://constitution.congress.gov/resources/decisions-
| overru...
|
| Looks like there's been plenty more of that in the civil
| rights era - look at all the cases in 1960s!
| granzymes wrote:
| Thanks to _Loper Bright_ , we finally have certainty as to what
| the Telecommunications Act of 1996 actually means.
|
| By way of background, the Obama administration first classified
| broadband providers as telecommunications services subject to
| common-carrier regulation under Title II in 2015. The FCC
| reversed itself under Trump, and then during the Biden
| administration changed its mind yet again. The law never changed.
|
| Each time, the courts deferred to the agency's interpretation as
| "reasonable", despite the fact that the interpretations were
| completely inconsistent. There is a single right answer: either
| the law classifies broadband carriers as offering
| telecommunications services or information services.
|
| Today, for the first time, a court has actually read the law[0]
| and concluded that broadband carriers offer information services,
| not telecommunications services. If that's not the policy result
| Congress wanted, then Congress can change the law instead of
| letting the President change his mind every 4 years.
|
| [0]
| https://www.opn.ca6.uscourts.gov/opinions.pdf/25a0002p-06.pd...
| vel0city wrote:
| Even this court opinion makes the same stupid mistake of
| misunderstanding what an ISP does in their attempt to further
| define what an information service is.
|
| > In short, an "information service" manipulates data, while a
| "telecommunications service" does not.
|
| Hacker News manipulates the data you put into the text box to
| post that comment into the list of comments it serves to me. My
| ISP _absolutely did not in any way_ manipulate _a single bit_
| of that data Hacker News sent as a reply to me when I requested
| _to Hacker News, not my ISP_ for that comment data.
|
| So even with this opinion's simplified standard of what an
| information service is, ISPs absolutely fail to meet this
| standard.
|
| Its astounding to me people can actually think an ISP is an
| "information service" under the 1996 definition.
|
| And before you suggest "well the ISP probably did some other
| weird stuff inside their networks to actually transit those
| packets to you", the 1996 definition carves out that just doing
| the things needed to be a telecommunications provider does not
| make you an information service provider.
|
| > but does not include any use of any such capability for the
| management, control, or operation of a telecommunications
| system or the management of a telecommunications service.
|
| https://www.congress.gov/104/plaws/publ104/PLAW-104publ104.p...
| tptacek wrote:
| For what it's worth, you're making a common parlance argument
| against statutory interpretation. Every word in the statute
| counts, and here it appears to have turned on the definition
| of an information service as something that _offers a
| capability_ , whether or not its core function involves using
| that capability, as well as usage of the term "information
| service" elsewhere in federal law that clearly included ISPs.
| vel0city wrote:
| > you're making a common parlance argument against
| statutory interpretation
|
| No, I included the actual text of the law of what an
| information service provider is in another comment and I'm
| using the test this opinion came up with. I'm not making up
| my own definition.
|
| Please tell me how my ISP does this, as this is what an
| "information service" is under the '96 law.
|
| "generating, acquiring, storing, transforming, processing,
| retrieving, utilizing, or making available information via
| telecommunications"
|
| They don't generate it, they don't really acquire it (they
| don't know what my query is, its encrypted), they don't
| store it, they don't transform it (it's encrypted), they
| don't process it (it's encrypted), they don't actually
| retrieve it (it's not on their servers or their drives or
| whatever), they don't utilize it (it's encrypted), and
| they're not the one making it available or not. _What part
| of what an ISP does involve any of that?!_
|
| _Please_ tell me how my ISP is manipulating the data we
| 're posting and accessing through this comment section.
| _Please_ tell me how that becomes an information service.
|
| > as well as usage of the term "information service"
| elsewhere in federal law that clearly included ISPs
|
| It doesn't unless you're severely corrupt, incompetent, or
| unable to read English at least from the few times I read
| the '96 act.
| tptacek wrote:
| Starting on page 12 of the decision you're citing, and in
| very tedious detail, the appeals court rebuts you.
|
| I'm not even saying you're wrong, I'm saying that the
| plain English meanings of sentences do not always control
| in statutory analysis. I just helped take a case to the
| Illinois Supreme Court, and lost there, over a similar
| issue. My definition is better! But I respect the legal
| process that produced a conflicting, controlling
| definition.
| vel0city wrote:
| Its still stupid and corrupt argument that in no way
| refutes my point. The ISP doesn't offer the capability to
| watch Netflix. If Netflix decided to shut down tomorrow
| the ISP has no say in it. If Hacker News banned me the
| ISP has no part of it. The ISP doesn't control it; they
| don't offer anything but the ability for me to "call" the
| HN server and ask for the content.
|
| If ISPs are considered "offering the capability", then
| old phone systems were also not telecommunications
| providers because they offered the capability to call
| Moviefone or time and weather providers or modems or
| whatever, and then absolutely nobody is a
| telecommunications provider. It's a stupid, ignorant, and
| illogical opinion to have.
| tantalor wrote:
| Maybe I'm remembering wrong, but when Chevron deference was
| overturned, didn't the court explicitly state that it only
| applies to future orders?
|
| i.e., prior orders relying on Chevron would be grandfathered.
|
| But here the rule was created April 2024, prior to Chevron
| decision in June 2024.
| granzymes wrote:
| The Supreme Court said in _Loper Bright_ that previous cases
| decided under _Chevron_ are still good law. But this lawsuit
| challenged a brand new FCC order that had not been previously
| litigated.
| tantalor wrote:
| Okay, but that's so weird!
|
| The court is saying, if we had litigated this (and most
| likely upheld it, because Chevron) then it could stand now,
| even after _Loper Bright_. But if we never looked at it
| before, then we get to use the new rule.
|
| That doesn't make a lot of sense.
|
| Like, the counterfactual is they litigated and upheld the
| order, so it's safe. But because it was never challenged
| before, it can be challenged now. Only orders that were
| challenged are safe.
|
| It would make more sense to do it the way I thought:
| everything, even if it wasn't challenged, that _would have_
| relied on Chevron still can rely on Chevron. That gives "the
| benefit of the doubt" to the agency that passed the
| regulation in the Chevron era.
|
| In the new scheme, the regulators have to comb through all
| their orders going back decades, figure out which ones were
| never litigated, and figure out how to defend it without
| Chevron.
| granzymes wrote:
| You're coming at this from the perspective of "it's weird
| to change the rules after the fact" which is reasonable but
| not how stare decisis works. The principle is that once
| something is decided once, it should be decided the same
| for all other parties litigating the issue unless and until
| the precedent is overturned. If something hasn't yet been
| litigated, it is still an open question.
|
| It would be weird if, for example, the Supreme Court said
| that gay marriage is constitutionally protected but all the
| existing laws banning it could stand because they were
| enacted earlier.
| gpm wrote:
| It would be equally weird if the Supreme Court said that
| gay marriage is constitutionally protected, but states
| that have previously successfully litigated challenges
| against their laws can keep forbidding it..
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| On the contrary, I'd expect the Supreme Court to say
| exactly something like that when it suits them. The
| Supreme Court throughout history has invented as many
| hoops as they needed and then jumped through them in
| order to appeal to political winds and public opinion.
| bluGill wrote:
| Everything can be litigated again. However eventually the
| courts have to slow that down. The courts decision is
| saying that Congress may not have done their job because
| the agency ruling was what they would have done anyway and
| so the courts don't want to overturn everything right away.
| I'm sure most of the previous decisions will be litigated
| (if congress doesn't change the law first), but they don't
| want thousands of cases to come before congress has a
| chance to make law what they should have done. If you
| challenge the rules now you have to convince the courts
| that congress wouldn't have passed that rule as law, which
| is harder (but not impossible).
|
| OTOH, I think/hope the courts are sending a message to
| congress that they need to work out more details in the
| laws.
| timewizard wrote:
| > figure out which ones were never litigated, and figure
| out how to defend it without Chevron.
|
| I'm fairly certain the regulated entities will take this
| upon themselves and will create the lawsuits that provide
| the opportunity for the administrative agency to defend
| their position.
|
| If they're that concerned, then they should get with
| Congress, and get a new law passed. This is precisely what
| Chevron was meant to create. Administrative agencies simply
| cannot unilaterally create and enforce law anymore.
| tantalor wrote:
| Oh, okay so the solution is as easy as "congress has to
| do a thing". Meaning it will never happen.
| tptacek wrote:
| Then, maybe it shouldn't?
| jauntywundrkind wrote:
| It's hard to see such a clear obvious case & come out so
| preposterously incredibly fantastically wrong.
|
| > _The question is whether, in so doing, they are merely a
| conduit for data transmission (a so-called "dumb pipe") and thus
| offer consumers a telecommunications service (as the Safeguarding
| Order concludes); or whether, instead, Broadband Internet Service
| Providers offer consumers the capability to acquire, store, and
| utilize data-and thus offer consumers an information service. In
| our view, the latter is the best reading of the Act._
|
| This doesn't match probably 9x 9's of internet traffic! This is
| almost _never_ the case!
|
| What do we do when government is so blankety inept? How do we
| reconcile a court that's allowed decide things with no respect to
| obvious facts? Why are there so few ways of dealing with these
| people in any serious capacity, getting them out of here?
| troyvit wrote:
| Every day I thank the old gods (and Longmont, CO) for my
| municipal gigabit.[1]
|
| [1] https://mynextlight.com/terms-conditions/
| tptacek wrote:
| Note that your municipal fiber network partners with Qwilt to
| preferentially accelerate commercial streaming platforms like
| Netflix.
| bingjames wrote:
| >"[U]nlike past challenges that the D.C. Circuit considered under
| Chevron, we no longer afford deference to the FCC's reading of
| the statute. Loper Bright Enters. v. Raimondo, 144 S. Ct. 2244,
| 2266 (2024) (overruling Chevron U.S.A. Inc. v. Nat. Res. Def.
| Council, Inc., 467 U.S. 837 (1984) ) ... Using 'the traditional
| tools of statutory construction,' id., we hold that Broadband
| Internet Service Providers offer only an 'information service'
| under 47 U.S.C. SS 153(24), and therefore, the FCC lacks the
| statutory authority to impose its desired net-neutrality policies
| through the 'telecommunications service'' provision of the
| Communications Act, id. SS 153(51).
|
| >47 U.S.C. SS 153(24) information service The term "information
| service" means the offering of a capability for generating,
| acquiring, storing, transforming, processing, retrieving,
| utilizing, or making available information via
| telecommunications, and includes electronic publishing, but does
| not include any use of any such capability for the management,
| control, or operation of a telecommunications system or the
| management of a telecommunications service.
|
| >telecommunications 47 USC SS 153(50) The term
| "telecommunications" means the transmission, between or among
| points specified by the user, of information of the user's
| choosing, without change in the form or content of the
| information as sent and received.
|
| What in the absolute hell are these definitions. These sound like
| they were made by the world's first LLM.
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