
Supreme Court pick: ISPs have First Amendment right to block websites - glitcher
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/07/net-neutrality-rules-are-illegal-according-to-trumps-supreme-court-pick/
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linuxftw
50 years from now, we won't have an internet. Everything will be accessible
only from a proprietary app, on a proprietary operating system, on a
proprietary device. Apps can only come from a sanctioned marketplace.

All walled garden, all the time. The internet in general will be replaced by
'Facebook pages'. No more URL bar. Many kids today don't know how to utilize
the internet but they do know how to consume apps.

This is the future that you vote for every time you buy an iPhone or a Windows
PC. This is the future you buy into when you buy an Android from an OEM that
doesn't allow unlocking their bootloader.

~~~
jstarfish
Sounds like AOL's vision for the future ~20 years ago. Keyword: ABANDONALLHOPE

It was fun while it lasted, but everything old becomes new again. Business
interests and law enforcement are far too entrenched with the current internet
for things to ever revert back to the wild west it once was.

Legislators went from thinking the internet was an inconsequential series of
tubes to now understanding its implications enough to legislate it, which is
indication enough that the party is over. With net neutrality dead, selective
law enforcement of content (FO/SESTA) established and ISPs allowed to be
choosy with how they participate in a network that depends on global
participation to have any utility at all, the walls of this garden are being
raised one slab at a time.

Blaming Apple, Microsoft or Google is not the solution. The storm is indeed
upon us, but it's not too late to start building an ark.

~~~
linuxftw
I'm not blaming the corporations. I'm blaming those who vote with their
dollars/<other currency> to further the construction of the walled garden.

------
kevin_b_er
And again we find Republican Party philosophy is that corporate rights are as
strong as or stronger than human rights. Greed is good.

~~~
User23
The first amendment doesn’t give you the right to use someone else’s printing
press or network. This is a completely reasonable ruling. You’re free to start
your own ISP.

There are plenty of Democrat VCs. I’m sure they have no interest in greed and
will be happy to fund you for purely idealistic reasons.

~~~
lisper
> You’re free to start your own ISP.

Not really.

[https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/10/another-state-
la...](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/10/another-state-lawmaker-has-
proposed-banning-municipal-broadband-networks/)

This is the Republican hypocrisy: _only_ corporations (or extremely wealthy
individuals) can start ISPs. Municipalities, a.k.a. The People, cannot.

~~~
User23
Republicans generally oppose what they consider unnecessary public spending
and public control of markets. Reasonable people can disagree on the merits of
that posture, but where’s the hypocrisy?

Also, I’m not sure that law actually precludes a municipality from setting up
an independent public utility that funds itself with subscription fees rather
than taxes.

~~~
lisper
> where’s the hypocrisy?

Republicans claim to favor local control over state and federal control. But
in fact they are perfectly happy to exercise state control over local
government (or federal control over state government) if local control
threatens business interests or empowers minorities or women.

Republicans also claim to revere the Constitution and the intent of the
founders. The Founders clearly intended for the means of communication to be a
public good. The government's duty to provide a postal service is written into
the Constitution. But the postal service was simply the state of the art in
communications technology in 1791. There is no reason to think that the
founders did not intend for that government responsibility to keep up with
technological advancements.

~~~
User23
> Republicans claim to favor local control over state and federal control. But
> in fact they are perfectly happy to exercise state control over local
> government (or federal control over state government) if local control
> threatens business interests or empowers minorities or women.

You just disqualified yourself from being considered intellectually honest by
engaging in bigoteering.

> The Founders clearly intended for the means of communication to be a public
> good. The government's duty to provide a postal service is written into the
> Constitution. But the postal service was simply the state of the art in
> communications technology in 1791

Again, don't take this the wrong way, but your ignorance is shocking. There
was this little thing called the (optical) telegraph that was a bit more state
of the art than post horses.

Furthermore, Ben Franklin quite clearly states that in order to have freedom
of the press you must first have a press. The 1st amendment wasn't construed
by any of the founders to imply socialized printing presses.

~~~
lisper
> (optical) telegraph

I presume you mean this?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semaphore_line](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semaphore_line)

Invented in 1792, four years after the Constitution was ratified.

(You might also want to look up "glass houses" and "throwing stones".)

> socialized printing presses

The Internet is not a printing press. Web sites are printing presses. The
Internet is the means by which content is distributed, not the means by which
it is produced.

~~~
User23
> You might also want to look up "glass houses" and "throwing stones".

You might want to read the link you shared. “Modern design of semaphores was
first foreseen by the British polymath Robert Hooke, who gave a vivid and
comprehensive outline of visual telegraphy to the Royal Society in a 1684
submission in which he outlined many practical details.” and “One of the first
experiments of optical signalling was carried out by the Anglo-Irish landowner
and inventor, Sir Richard Lovell Edgeworth in 1767”

>The Internet is not a printing press. Web sites are printing presses. The
Internet is the means by which content is distributed, not the means by which
it is produced.

You’re not even wrong.

------
cmurf
The main contra-agent to corporate censorship is competition. But the U.S. by
political choice doesn't really have strong competition law, anti-competitive
behavior is profitable, so it's likely most people in the U.S. will continue
to have one or two choices in ISPs.

The next contra-agent is making sure states allow local municipalities to own,
or regulate, and offer alternatives.

The track record for Republicans in the similar case of health care insurance
is, ignore the problem of lack of competition, allow mergers and
conglomeration. As a party, it's ideologically lost on both issues.

And the track record for Democrats is not really that much farther behind,
they took a busted anti-competitive health insurance market and made it
compulsory, while also offering no public option like a Medicare or Medicaid
buy-in even though they certainly would have had the votes for it.

So either party poses difficulty with censorship free internet, but as there's
no viable 3rd party, for now the emphasis should be on getting more
technically qualified people elected at all levels of government, and accept
that a lot of persuasion is going to be needed to bring Democrats along.

------
davidkuhta
> But Kavanaugh argued that ISPs are like cable TV operators—since cable TV
> companies can choose not to carry certain channels, Internet providers
> should be able to choose not to allow access to a certain website

For all the legal scholars:

Would there be any legal distinction between signals which are broadcasted (as
in traditional TV, whether digital or analog) and the structure of the
internet having packets exchanged which ultimately contain two MAC addresses
between two entities?

Note: Not a network engineer so additional comments on domain specific nuances
I may be ignorant of are welcome.

------
pavel_lishin
Just like phone companies have the right to block phone calls.

~~~
craftyguy
As much as it pains me to say this because I absolutely hate junk mail:
internet service providers should be like the USPS, with an obligation to
deliver all the content regardless of the content.

The internet is (arguably) more powerful today than the telephone is, or ever
was, as a tool for mass communication, learning, and dissention. If the
government allows companies to stifle this resource without themselves
providing an unbiased alternative, then the government has effectively,
indirectly, snuffed out a very important medium for free speech in the 21st
century.

~~~
astrodust
There's always some sort of reasonable limit that must be imposed. The USPS is
a neutral carrier but they're not _required_ to transport dangerous materials
or hostile devices like mail bombs.

Where that line is drawn is where there should be debate. By what definition
is something hostile, and so on.

~~~
mjevans
The USPS does get to require that things are properly labeled and items which
are /hazardous/ (such as highly flammable/reactive/etc materials) might
require non-generic transport (which is that USPS is supposed to provide).

Are you proposing that EM emissions controlled entirely by the transporting
party might spontaneously explode based on the content of the data as
transcribed by those automated systems?

~~~
astrodust
I mean just as the USPS will not knowingly transport things like mail bombs,
an ISP should be permitted to curtail traffic known to be harmful (e.g. DDOS
variety).

Obviously the packets themselves won't explode.

------
craftyguy
Things are going to get a lot worse before they get better, if ever.

------
glitcher
Imagine if roads were built like this.

"Buy the mall + metro bundle for discounted access to many convenient routes
to your favorite shopping destinations!"

------
pascalxus
Imagine if GM or Ford prevented their cars from driving on certain roads.

~~~
astrodust
Imagine if GM built a significant highway and made it available for free for
any GM OnStar customer, but everyone else had to pay tolls.

This used to seem utterly dystopian, but it's probably right around the
corner. For instance, Detroit could be forced to sell off highways and if GM's
financing division bought one as an investment...

~~~
mindslight
> _Detroit could be forced to sell off highways and if GM 's financing
> division bought one as an investment_

This is completely analogous to the current issue, just an iteration or two
behind. Detroit should be _incapable_ of "selling off highways", as they're
public property built out with public money. "Detroit" is a force monopoly
that purported to steward public money for public works, not a free enterprise
that took private investment to improve private property. An [inherently
temporary] politician purporting to represent Detroit while selling off assets
for short-term balance sheet boosts is in violation of the public trust and
therefore has no actual authority to contract.

All of these communication companies used to fall under the purview of
regulated utilities, and were built out using public subsidies. They've
lobbied to escape the regulatory regime, and are now playing the "muh
propertuh" card with public infrastructure that they essentially _embezzled
from the public_.

If big ISP wishes offer only curated media services instead of general
communications, they can easily divest their holdings of this inappropriately-
titled public infrastructure to another company which can then carry their
traffic non-exclusively.

~~~
astrodust
"Should be incapable" and "are legally prohibited from" are two different
things here. The United States is perilously close to seeing its
infrastructure utterly collapse in many areas with the backlog of repairs
climbing exponentially every year.

Sure, maintenance is expensive, but failing to do routine maintenance means a
simple repair becomes a big problem.

If there's one thing that America seems to love it's building things, and if
there's one thing it seems allergic to it's paying taxes to keep those things
in working order.

The only way out for some municipalities might be to offload these expensive
responsibilities to third parties (e.g. "Public-Private Partnerships" or
outright sale) to get them off their books.

Domino's taking over road repair responsibilities is just the beginning of a
sad trend.

The problem here is that roads aren't cheap to maintain but they're necessary
and if the only option is a private one then equal access is critical. The
same goes for network infrastructure although at a smaller scale.

~~~
mindslight
This is the kind of thinking that enables this cancer of public-private
corruption. The agility offered by the private sector would have been during
the build out. Privatizing a _monopoly_ after having used public authority to
carve it out and after having suffered the bureaucratic red tape to build it
is _exactly backwards_. Frankly, we'd be better off letting the high-speed
road surface fall apart rather than giving up the public right of way!

The sensible public-private synergy would be to retain public control of the
monopoly while applying market freedom to what gets funded, so politicians
could no longer play chicken with services. Let individual taxpayers choose
between funding roads repairs and traffic police, between national parks and
the NSA.

------
User23
It’s not the Supreme Court’s job to make policy. This is a job for Congress.

