back to article FCC net neutrality rules dead again as appeals court sides with Big Telco

The prolonged fight for net neutrality in America has shifted once again, with the FCC's resurrected regulations struck down by a panel of appeals court judges today. The decision from the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals, filed today, formally killed the FCC's April order that once again classified internet service providers as …

  1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

    Interseting argument

    "net has survived and thrived enough long without the need for a net neutrality rule"

    There has been no need for a law against this thing we have just decided to do before - so there is no need for it now.

    We have never needed restrictions on asbestos / smoking / lead paint / kinder surprise, upto now - so why do we need any laws against them all of a sudden ?

    1. Yes Me Silver badge

      Re: Interseting argument

      How about reviving the radon-infused water business while we're at it? That used to sell very well back in the day.

      Or in solid form

      1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

        Re: Interseting argument

        If we can find a celebrity to claim it smells like her Vagina - we're on

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Interseting argument

      I agree with your take, but one caveat (setting aside the "Kinder" issue). "[A]sbestos / smoking / lead paint" is more analogous to the content than the carrier. Asbestos installers, petrol stations selling fags, and paint shops were not the concern, rather the products (and therefore their producers) were. In the present timeline, Social Media is the most obvious "cancer" for this analogy, although that may be temporal.

      So what you have, I believe, correctly indicated, is that laws should be prioritized that limit the risk emanating from content providers. Section 230, etc may need alerted?

      (And for my own edification, requiring Netflix to stop production of all shite content)

  2. Sora2566 Silver badge

    "We need action from congress to solve this issue"

    This issue isn't getting solved, is it?

    1. biddibiddibiddibiddi Bronze badge

      Well, not really solved, but it will get ended, forcibly and unilaterally now that there's an entirely conservative/MAGA-controlled government bought and paid for by Big Tech and other rapacious industries that don't care about the people. Toss in some Democrats and Independents who can see that they won't get anything passed from their own agenda in the next couple of years and decide to accept any bribes that come their way and then get out by the next election, and the right will have all the votes they need to do anything they want. Then if we're allowed to have elections again, maybe Democrats get control, and they repeal whatever got passed and the cycle starts over again.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Do you actually believe that democrats are not completely bought and paid for by big tech/ag/pharma?

        1. Wang Cores

          I don't like dirty cops but I'd rather the dirty cops that sweep the streets and bust the occasional street dealer as a token gesture over an open mafia supported by "concerned (wealthy) citizens".

      2. TruthDecay

        Does this release Telco’s to demand Big big tech might have to pay to carry their video and ads?

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    What next? Dedicated presidential lanes on the freeways like some other banana republics?

    1. IGotOut Silver badge
    2. Fruit and Nutcase Silver badge
      Trollface

      Handy for El Presidente to get to the Golf Club

    3. simonlb Silver badge

      Yes, it's called a Hyperloop.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Follow the money

    Forget the public benefit.

    America!

    1. blu3b3rry
      Trollface

      Re: Follow the money

      Freedom!

      1. Big_Boomer

        Re: Follow the money

        Greedom!! There fixed that for ya ;-)

  5. chip66

    The problem is local not federal

    This obsession over federal net neutrality regulation is a forever game of political illusion. Almost every local jurisdiction has zoning rules allowing only one telecom and one cable television provider. Until that is corrected, this fight will go on forever.

    The fed needs to get out of local affairs, and people need to get involved in local politics instead.

    1. Twilight

      Re: The problem is local not federal

      Local is one way to fix it. Federal is another. Either we get 1000s of different local zoning regulations changed or we pass one regulation at the Federal level. Local is probably the better solution but it is nearly impossible to accomplish.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: The problem is local not federal

      What about states that have legislated that the locally-involved citizens and municipal government of No-Bandwidthville are *not permitted* to roll out municipally-owned last-mile fibre, in favour of the incumbent Big Telco/Cableco who are grabbing federal funding for broadband expansion in "underserved areas" with one hand, and telling those same locally-involved citizens to "Talk to the [other] hand" when they complain about being on the long end of a wet piece of string as the least-horrible-possible hardwired Internet service?

      Up in my neck of Canada it's only marginally better; Bell Canada is still whinging on about having to share their federally-funded last-mile fibre expansions with third parties like the company I work for. Fingers crossed the CRTC pulls the stick out and tells them to either get moving or pay back all that juicy profit executive bonus funding broadband coverage funding.

  6. Claptrap314 Silver badge
    Boffin

    Such shallow coverage, El Reg

    For the first 2/3rds of the article, El Reg carries on as this this is a decade-old issue. Only near the bottom do we see that the matter goes back to the 90's. But the stage was being set before that.

    In the late seventies and into the eighties, cable was expanding in the US, but the last mile is/was EXPENSIVE. Cable companies sought concessions from local governments to protect their investments, and this resulted in the cable monopolies we have to this day. When the internet came to consumers, it was over the telephone at first.

    It was one of those timing things--copyright-destroying (user-to-user sharing--Winamp?) took off just as cable internet was getting started, and was tremendously enabled by it. Big Content was apoplectic, which is understandable, and demanded that these apps be blocked. It did not help that each one of these apps declared that is was so special that it did not need to use exponential back-off--until just the traffic from that on app was enough to congest itself. These new apps were a legal threat, in that the ISPs were enabling the violation of copyright, and a technical threat, in that they were pumping out far, far, more traffic than the switches could handle. The cable companies were already cutting deals regarding content on their networks, so they were ready to do so with the internet they were providing as well.

    Which threatened to kill new apps entirely on the Internet.

    Up until this point, (late in Bush II era) the US government had taken a very hands-off policy regarding the internet, but this was seen as a crisis. Net neutrality began as a slightly-left-of-center effort to block the ISPs, especially cable companies, from ruining the Internet. When Big Content jumped in, however, we should have realized where this was going.

    The fight is almost entirely between Big Content and the ISPs regarding contract clauses. Don't think it is anything else. Breaking up the local cable monopolies would be a good thing for several reasons, but it would mean that Big Content would have way too much power relative to the ISPs. I don't like the implications of trying to redress that imbalance. It may be that the best we can do for consumers is to leave the cable monopolies in place (with more (uggh) regulation) plus NN.

    1. Jamie Jones Silver badge

      Re: Such shallow coverage, El Reg

      I disagree. ISPs originally had bandwidth caps and built their network accordingly. If you wanted more, you paid more.

      The problem was when the ISPs switched to unmetered use, and then were caught with their pants down when people used it. It may have been file sharing products that pushed the increase, but if not, eventually it would have been something else.

      It was not the apps job to congest itself anywhere beyond the local network. Basically the user was using a resource they'd paid for, and it was entirely the ISPs problem their networks got swamped. Not the customer, and not the content provider, be it YouTube or Netflix or whatever.

      The ISPs started to squeeze Netflix for money because of their own miscalculations - the bandwidth had been paid for by the customer, and to charge Netflix etc was double charging.

      They ballsed up. In their greed, they offered a service they couldn't deliver, By rights, if they couldn't handle that, then next time a customer's contact was up for renewal, they should have introduced a cap, or raised the price. Instead, they keep the price "low" (and I mean that relatively) to avoid losing the customer, and then attempted to blame everyone else when their infrastructure chocked.

      1. hayzoos

        Re: Such shallow coverage, El Reg

        None of that has anything to do with NN. NN addresses treating like content differently depending on the provider. NN has nothing to do with network managment like low latency for VOIP compared to .iso downloads. Nor does it have anything to do with underbuilding capacity while oversubscribing that network.

        1. Jamie Jones Silver badge

          Re: Such shallow coverage, El Reg

          Firstly, I was replying to a post talking about how p2p etc.was throttling bandwidth. etc.

          Secondly, of course it has to do with NN. Not on the technical level, but it's because of oversubscribing that the ISPs started to throttle Netflix and YouTube etc.

          Being paid by the local doctor to degrade connections to the websites of all other doctors is just one aspect of NN.

          The majority of NN abuses are entirely due to the ISPs trying to squeeze big content providers because they've badly managed their own resources - offering an unlimited product they can't provision for.

          (Not my downvote)

  7. AbeSapian

    SCOTUS

    Let me guess where the Supremes are going to come down on this. I can hardly wait for some more of Alito's tortured logic on the issue.

    1. StudeJeff

      Re: SCOTUS

      No need for any tortured logic, the FCC overstepped its legal authority. I really doubt it will get to the Court, they have more important cases to deal with.

      Overturing Kelo would be a GREAT next step!

  8. StudeJeff

    The law is the law

    The bottom line of this isn't really about net neutrality, it's about the authority of government agencies to come up with rules that have the power of law with no law to support them.

    The agencies don't get to do that. It is there job to carry out laws passed by Congress. If Congress doesn't give an agency authority to do something it just doesn't have the authority, and the SCOTUS made that clear with the Loper Bright decision.

    If the politicians in Congress feel so strongly that net neutrality is the right way to go they have a proper, Constitutional tool to make it happen, all they have to do is pass it into law.

    The fact that they haven't done that, even during the Obama years when the Democrats who support it, had solid control of both houses, shows that they really don't care that much.

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