So far today I've learned that a two year old policy being repealed is anti-gay, will stop women from getting abortions, will stop the black lives matter movement from speaking freely, and will prevent the #metoo movement from growing. Yes, all because the internet before 2015 was completely censored and prevented free speech.
If anything, I've seen a significant rise in censorship since NN was passed.
So far, I count five posts from your account just within this sub thread. Not one has any citations for claims that you make. This undermines the credibility of your arguments.
Please back up your statements by pointing to sources that support your interpretation of laws and events so that others can verify them.
If you're hearing this for the first time then you aren't getting your news from someone who is aware of the US Telecom Association v FCC case in which the court of appeals made it clear that because of first amendment problems, the FCC can't prohibit censorship by ISPs.
The court of appeals did no such thing. In your second link, the most recent decision, it wrote:
> Does the rule lie within the agency’s statutory authority? And is it consistent with the First Amendment? The answer to both questions, in our view, is yes.
This was the majority opinion, although one judge dissented and said it did violate the First Amendment.
The court did mention a clause in the FCC order then under consideration about ‘edited’ services, which is what your first link takes out of context. The order itself explicitly allowed for such services, so as far as I can tell, the court did not opine one way or the other on whether ISPs separately have a First Amendment right to provide them. This isn’t as big a loophole as it sounds, though. Describing the order’s requirements, the court wrote:
> That would be true of an ISP that offers subscribers a curated experience by blocking websites lying beyond a specified field of content (e.g., family friendly websites). It would also be true of an ISP that engages in other forms of editorial intervention, such as throttling of certain applications chosen by the ISP, or filtering of content into fast (and slow) lanes based on the ISP’s commercial interests. An ISP would need to make adequately clear its intention to provide “edited services” of that kind, id. ¶ 556, so as to avoid giving consumers a mistaken impression that they would enjoy indiscriminate “access to all content available on the Internet, without the editorial intervention of their broadband provider,” id. ¶ 549. It would not be enough under the Order, for instance, for “consumer permission” to be “buried in a service plan—the threats of consumer deception and confusion are simply too great.” Id. ¶ 19; see id. ¶ 129.
> There is no need in this case to scrutinize the exact manner in which a broadband provider could render the FCC’s Order inapplicable by advertising to consumers that it offers an edited service rather than an unfiltered pathway. No party disputes that an ISP could do so if it wished, and no ISP has suggested an interest in doing so in this court. That may be for an understandable reason: a broadband provider representing that it will filter its customers’ access to web content based on its own priorities might have serious concerns about its ability to attract subscribers.
It isn't two years old. Its been a heavily disputed area of law/regulation since 1996 with various patchworks that served similar functions. From actual regulation, to threatening to regulate if there was too much backlash, to regulating again, to regulating under Title 2.
1996 Telecommunication Act: It was a legal gray area, particularly given dial up / dsl over telephone lines.
2002: FCC exempts NCTA by declaring it an information service, not telecommunications.
2005: NCTA wins at the Supreme Court
Open Internet Principles: 2005-2010 (i.e. Threatening to regulate)
Open Internet Order: 2010-2015 (Regulating, legally overturned)
Regulatory framework repealed today: 2015-2017
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"If anything, I've seen a significant rise in censorship since NN was passed."
Censorship by whom? A bunch of websites that are completely separate entities from ISPs that are monopolies for all intents and purposes?
'Censorship by whom? A bunch of websites that are completely separate entities from ISPs that are monopolies for all intents and purposes?'
Yes, those same web sites that are breathlessly telling me today the repealing NN is a mortal threat to my very existence, who then turn around and engage in censorship themselves.
> What? The break the internet movement didn't mention that part? That censorship by ISPs was ok under net neutrality?
1) You are in favor of censorship without clear disclosure.
2) You believe its acceptable such censorship should be controlled by government granted near monopolies.
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You are talking about a ruling that mentions as an unrelated aside about the editorial right of content curation being legal and that right being more powerful than Title II due to the existence of the First Amendment. However, if its exercised, you are required to clearly disclose it to consumers before they purchase from you.
Without Title II, that requirement to clearly disclose no longer exists with a clear history of case law.
So...I'm really uncertain why you feel a requirement to disclose censorship before a purchase is made was an unfair regulatory burden.
I'm glad you have made it clear you were being disingenuous about your earlier complaints about censorship publicly.
> That would be true of an ISP that offers subscribers a curated experience by blocking websites lying beyond a specified field of content (e.g., family friendly websites). It would also be true of an ISP that engages in other forms of editorial intervention, such as throttling of certain applications chosen by the ISP, or filtering of content into fast (and slow) lanes based on the ISP’s commercial interests. An ISP would need to make adequately clear its intention to provide “edited services” of that kind, so as to avoid giving consumers a mistaken impression that they would enjoy indiscriminate “access to all content available on the Internet, without the editorial intervention of their broadband provider,”
> It would not be enough under the Order, for instance, for “consumer permission” to be “buried in a service plan—the threats of consumer deception and confusion are simply too great.”
And now, you've legalized the "buried in a service plan" option. Congratulations.
Thanks for the links. What you say is true, but not the whole truth. According to your third link, ISPs can censor as long they clearly disclose it to customers.
> The only real roadblock is money. Fiber ISPs are super cheap at scale, but are effectively impossible to bootstrap unless you are already a millionaire.
You're completely missing my point. Today everyone is screaming at the top of their lungs that because of the repeal of NN, ISPs will begin censoring speech, while these campaigns are being financed and propagated by the very entities that engage in wholesale censorship of speech.
I actually laughed out loud today when I saw a tweet from twitter saying that NN will allow for censorship. Twitter is a festering den of opaque censorship. No one sees the irony?
Let's suppose I put up a website where I accept articles about model trains. You submit articles about how to grow anthrax at home. I pass, in that they are not about model trains. Am I a shocking censor? No.
Or let's suppose you submit an article that is about model trains, but I don't think it's very good. I refuse it. is that censorship? Also no.
Twitter gets to decide what goes on their platform. If you don't like it, you can post it on some other platform. Or just make your own platform, one equally available to every Internet user.
If Comcast, on the other hand, decides to block a site because it's critical of them, then many millions of people will not be able to see it, and many of them won't be able to switch to a different ISP. That is censorship.
This feels too much like a similar argument that people have been making lately, where silencing voices can only be considered "censorship" if it comes from the government. I'm so tired of seeing this! It's part of a larger trend, where people arbitrarily narrow definitions in service of their argument. It's disingenuous, to say the least.
(For the record, I'm AGAINST censorship whether it's Twitter, Comcast, or anyone else who provides services to the masses. Small private "clubs" like your model train website are a different animal. And yes, obviously that means that there are grey areas that cannot be cleanly resolved. Such is life.)
Comcast is not your average private company because they hold a monopoly or oligopoly position in many markets.
In effective marketplaces, we trust the choice of purchasers to do most of the necessary work of making sure companies really serve the public. If some ISP in a competitive market decided to shut off access to all Republican-leaning news and commentary, we'd expect many people to switch to an ISP that didn't censor. But if Comcast did that, many people would just be screwed.
I agree that censorship is the pervasive silencing of voices. I disagree that Twitter can do that. Twitter may kick some people off their platform, but the Internet's open nature means those people can set up their own website. ISPs in noncompetitive markets, on the other hand, can indeed censor material, because many people will have no easy way to get that material.
That's why common carrier regulations predate the Internet by decades: some societal infrastructure is too important and too prone to capture to leave it up to the whims of individual executives. You could make the argument that Twitter is that kind of infrastructure. But given that only 20% of Americans use Twitter even once a month and a much smaller number use it daily, I think it's hard to say it's in the same category as the telephone or the Internet itself.
Ok, I can see where you are coming from, but I guess we fundamentally disagree on this. I see any company that provides a de facto public "square" as being equivalent on some level to a public space. (Much as malls were deemed to be a form of public space in the courts a while back, not that it is completely settled law.)
In my opinion, when a company's platform becomes one of the largest and most important venues for public discussion, they can no longer be considered a purely "private" entity in the same way. Corporations exist at the leisure of the public, as the public allows their charters to exist and defines (through law) the powers granted to the corporation. Expression of fundamental freedoms like freedom of speech defeats corporate concerns in this case. The public square must be open to the public, or democracy cannot function.
There are two key differences between Twitter and public space. One is that public space is owned by the public. The other is that public space is physically central to a community. All web sites are equidistant. The reason we don't have public space on the Internet yet is that we have a such a superfluity of private spaces.
I get your theory that private community spaces take on additional responsibilities once they're important enough to a community and maybe there's a way to legislate that. But it would be challenging. HN is definitely an important space for this community, for example. Every local newspaper is important too. The notion that we should have detailed federal regulations for exactly how to moderate a discussion thread plus a legal appeals process strikes me as unworkable in practice.
If we really want virtual public space, I think the thing to do is just to build or buy it. It would be easy enough to nationalize Facebook and Twitter for example; Congress just says "now they're part of the government", optionally paying the shareholders.
"Public" and "private" spaces are not so clear-cut. Not all public space is publicly owned. Again, see the shopping mall: https://www.minnpost.com/cityscape/2015/03/complex-role-mall.... As the article points out, the notion of "public space" is really a sort of conflict zone with ever-shifting boundaries. (If you remember "free speech zones" you can see how even fully public space gets attacked when protest becomes inconvenient.)
I completely agree that it would be impractical to legislate moderation or terms of service, except on maybe a very coarse scale. I'm not sure what the answer is. Like much in the political sphere, this may just be a space where law and litigation has to fight it out with private industry until the end of time. A "solution" that satisfies all parties may not be possible.
Because we are not being honest. You want a private company to act as a public company. Nothing wrong with it, just that public should first buy them out.
You do realize that we had net neutrality regulation before 2015, right? It was just enforced via other means, means which were found by the courts to be overreach by the FCC in 2015, at which point the regulation was restored by reclassifying ISPs under Title II of the Communications Act.
If anything, I've seen a significant rise in censorship since NN was passed.
The hyperbole today is just off the charts sad.