Is global net neutrality NOW really at risk ?
- Thread starter Hrothbern
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Lexicus
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Jesus, I didn't realize the NRA was this cancerous
The Senate has taken the first step in rolling back the FCC's vote to kill net neutrality by introducing a "resolution of disapproval" for the vote. That doesn't sound like much, but apparently that is the official first step Congress must take according to the Congressional Review Act to undo regulations made by non-legislative federal agencies.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/senate-officially-introduces-resolution-restore-182200431.html
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/senate-officially-introduces-resolution-restore-182200431.html
hobbsyoyo
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It still ultimately relies on enough Republicans crossing the aisle in both the House and Senate to pass a repeal to go anywhere. It's nice that it got this far but ultimately Net Neutrality is dead until 2020 at the earliest barring a court intervention.
Well according to the article, they only need one more Republican in the Senate for this to avoid Pence using his tiebreaking power to kill it. Of course, the House is the real problem here. And even if it passes, Trump is almost guaranteed to veto it and I don't think there'd be enough Congressional support to overturn his veto.
The state of Washington just passed a law protecting net neutrality. It was signed by their governor a few days ago. This seems to be a good development, but this is far from over. See, in the FCC's vote to end net neutrality, they anticipated something like this might happen, so they worded the repeal in a way that forbids states from making their own laws protecting net neutrality. So this law passed in Washington is certainly going to face a legal challenge from both the FCC and the telecom companies.
I'm not. At least not when it comes to legislation versus regulation. A non-legislative body like the FCC should not be able to overrule any legislative body, even if that legislative body is at a "lower" level of government.
In other words, I believe legislation should only be able to be overruled by higher legislation or a Supreme Court ruling deeming it unconstitutional.
hobbsyoyo
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The power to regulate this industry was given to the FCC through legislation. It's not like they don't have a mandate to do this.
And in more practical terms, allowing every state government to set rules on how airwaves can be used would be a disaster. The Congress didn't just hand over this authority for no reason - interference is a massive challenge for communications and our country cannot afford to have 50 sets of rules. In addition to the practical aspects, allowing the 50 states to set their own rules would run afoul of our international obligations on the subject which were agreed to for the same reason. Foreign governments should not have to coordinate with each state, that would be madness for the same practical reasons.
And I'm saying that needs to change. Regulatory agencies fall under the executive branch of our government. As such, their power to regulatory power should only allow them to enforce laws passed by Congress. So while Congress may have given them the authority they have now, I would argue it was unconstitutional for them to do so. The same goes for every other regulatory agency at the federal level.
In theory this is a valid concern, but history shows this almost never happens, especially for something that is critical to the nation as a whole. On most important issues that are left up to the states, there are only slight variations in each state's laws and things are mostly standardized. There's no reason to think it would be any different with telecommunication.
I mean, it's not like states exist in a vacuum. The state governments do talk to each other and do try to make their laws compatible with each other on important issues. If for no other reason than the Constitution kinda requires them to.
This wouldn't be an issue at all. Treaties that have been ratified by the Senate carry the weight and authority of legislation, meaning they would preempt any state laws on the matter and the states would be forced to craft their own laws to be in compliance with our international obligations.
hobbsyoyo
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And I'm saying you're wrong but hey you've got your complete philosophy of governance and I'm not going to change your mind so there's that.
And I'm saying you're wrong but hey you've got your complete philosophy of governance and I'm not going to change your mind so there's that.
At least we are allies in this though.
innonimatu
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I'd like to expand on what you say and point out that having one central state legislate rules for a big territory always serves the interests of those who want to achieve economic monopolies over those activities. And monopolies always ultimately reduce choice and lead to higher costs to consumers as high profit margins become possible.
The theory is that a bigger market allows for more competition. The practical results I've watched is that economies of scale, even if small, encourage big investments to be made for the purpose of achieving monopoly power. Those may involve temporary subsidies to the product/service with the aim of crushing competition (Uber being the most obvious example) or bribing politicians for regulation that will hamper new entrants into the market. Usually one and then the other. In the end there is less competition, and you even lose the ability to import a different product from somewhere not far away. Ultimately the aim (with free trade) is for one global market, and to achieve monopolies in that market.
This also applies to services even where those services are locally a natural monopoly: you may only have one communications provider in your town, but if the the next town over will have another moving will not be as hard as if you need to move to the next country! It makes it harder for those local monopolies to abuse their power.
More local sets of rules, differences between regions, would not have impeded communication and trade. But they would have negated those economies of scale that encourage investment into building monopolies. Production costs might be somewhat higher, but I believe we'd also see more competition and more investment.
Making this argument over airwaves seems anachronistic, since these days the vast majority of network traffic doesn't use any radio communications. Any regulation regarding airwaves would hardly affect net neutrality at all.
It is still not a good idea to try to regulate the global internet on a local scale, but the reasons are unrelated to interference.
hobbsyoyo
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Cell phones use wireless communication. It is irrelevant if the "vast majority" is wired if important segments are not.
You're also misreading me. I'm not making the case that specific net neutrality rules at the state level will cause problems. I'm making the case that allowing states to make their own rules on communications and in particular, rules directly contrary to the FCC, will cause problems.
I don't disagree with that, but I find your interference argument very weak. Cells tend to be quite small, so statewide regulations wouldn't matter that much in terms of interference. More importantly, the argument would allow the logical conclusions to let the FCC regulate the airwaves - and just those - and the network providers can do whatever they want in the wired part. They would be happy to do that, because the radio access network is mostly net neutral due to technical reasons, anyway.
hobbsyoyo
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The interference issue is weak only because we're restricting it to things connected to the internet that use cellular bands. When you broaden it to include anything that carries data over airwaves and all of a sudden interference is a massive issue. Part of why cell phones are a small potential problem for interference is precisely because they are regulated to this end effect anyways. Yeah you can argue that they are low-power but that's only part of it. The bands they use are specifically set aside for them. If every wireless service provider (whether connected to the internet or not) was allowed to do whatever they wanted it would be madness. And given that wireless and wired networks are so intertwined there is no easy way to separate them. In any case the mandate of the FCC covers all mediums of communication wired or not. Having a single authority to set national standards is advantageous.
Obviously, you need to assign frequencies to services. Most states are big enough that there wouldn't be many problems if that was done at the state level, but you're right that doing this at the federal level is advantageous.
However, the airwaves argument is becoming weaker the more communication happens over fibers. I am of the opinion that these need to be regulated as well, but the argument is more difficult to make, since at first glance, cables are not a limited resource like bands in the electromagnetic spectrum. For cables you need to make economic arguments. If you don't come up with good ones, the mandate of the FCC might be reduced to airwaves at one point.
