from Hacker News

Judges suspends FCC net neutrality restoration rule

by nickt on 8/2/24, 9:09 PM with 194 comments

• by consumer451 on 8/3/24, 1:38 AM

  > Strengthened by a June Supreme Court decision undermining the regulatory authority of federal agencies, opponents intensify their legal offensive--this time against net neutrality. The decision could profoundly alter digital life and commerce.

  Incumbents rejoice!? Disruptors be dammed!?

  How will this new regulatory environment affect the disruption-dependent VC sector?

• by parasense on 8/2/24, 10:08 PM

  Back in the old days, early 1990s Net Neutrality actually meant something, and was not an overloaded nebulous term like today. It was very simple, being a boiler-plate contract clause between Internet routers, such as universities that peered with eachother. In peering agreements there are several contractual clauses, and the net neutrality was simply sayign that each side of the agreement would forward packets without any interference. In some cases this causes one side to disproportionatly overload the other, but with increased peering the load would ballance out as time went. Many universities had this kidn of agreement with other universities they peered with back in the days of inter-academic networks. No reason to router over the internet when reasearchers can direectly access paperes on the backside, and everything was peachy... Net Neutrality meant something, and it was a very concrete idea.

  Transiting services changes things, those are not exactly peering agreements, it more like a company connecting one university to another, and that traffic was interfered with... usually to simply offload the packets/frames off the network as quickly as possibly, or in other cases to not impact other higher paying customers.... and those packets/frames would transit over a crappy legacy network to be dumpped on the other side with little care for quallity beyond the minimum agreement.

  This is why it's so weird for consumers to say they get to have Net Neutrality, because consumers are not normally peering with other consumers, or universities, or whatevery industry. Their just end nodes on the network, and there is fundamentally nothing to be neutral about.

  When it comes to netflix complaining about some ISP refusing to peer with them for free, it's also very strange, because there is no mandate to freely peer with anybody. And, when a traffic hogs asks to peer with you (as an ISP) that would certainly entail a higher level of network management or infrastructure. So again, these net neutrality crusaders are very strange when looked at in perspeective of the OIG net neutrality.

  Should the internet be a common carrier, in my humble opinion probably yes. But that's orthogonal to the meaning of Net Neutrality. The point is it's an overloaded term that means nothing anymore.

• by kerkeslager on 8/3/24, 4:40 AM

  I remember when this was an important issue to me.

  It still is important, but at this point there are so much more important issues at stake which shouldn't even be issues. Does educating voters about issues like this even matter in 2024 if there won't be a vote any more by 2028?

  I'm tired.

• by allears on 8/2/24, 9:33 PM

  [flagged]

• by ryandrake on 8/2/24, 9:43 PM

  The only branch of the government that seems to be able to do anything anymore is the judiciary, and all they seem to be able to do is flip the same light switch on and then off and then on again. Congress has been effectively gridlocked and do-nothing for at least 35 years--all of my adult life. The last time a party had over 59 Senate seats was when I was a toddler. The executive branch's powers are being quickly eroded by SCOTUS.

  So, net neutrality (and other policy) is going to be forever stuck in this loop of constant arguing over law that was written during the time of fax machines. With one court stopping it, another court reversing the stoppage, the next court reversing the reversing of the stoppage, another case happening with more clever lawyers and so the next court reverses the previous reverse, and then on appeal that reverse gets reversed, and then a random judge pulls out some wording from a 1807 law and reverses again, and this is basically going to be what counts as governance for the rest of my life.

  EDIT: Mods, feel free to destroy this thread--I can't delete it anymore. I try to talk about the inability to resolve Net Neutrality and it just turns into another unproductive flame war. Sigh.

• by throwaway984393 on 8/3/24, 12:10 AM

  I wonder if this is what the slow erosion of the Roman Republic felt like