Relying on that logic, the court could come back and say "Netflix could cease to exist, but Breaking Bad Season 2 would continue to exist; does that make Netflix a telecommunications provider?"
I think one sane way to look at this is that the most reasonable way to look at the concepts of "telecommunications" and "information" are different in 2024 than they were in 1996, and the 1996 interpretation will control.
Later
I didn't see that bit about lobbying in your original comment, but you get that the "other side" of this issue has even more powerful lobbyists, right? Google alone is an order of magnitude more valuable than Verizon and AT&T combined.
It's corrupt because they gave us an obvious test:
> In short, an “information service” manipulates data, while a “telecommunications service” does not.
And then completely ignored it for $reasons.
> does that make Netflix a telecommunications provider?
This really makes it hard for me to take your arguments as good faith. Nowhere in common parlance definitions, legal definitions, or court opinions would make Netflix a telecommunications company. You don't even give one here.
> but you get that the "other side" of this issue has even more powerful lobbyists
Yeah but one side is ignoring the simple tests they themselves come up with while the other actually relies on the plain language laid out in the actual law instead of mental pretzels to make an inconsistent and illogical position.
I'm not sure relegating all of statutory interpretation to "$reasons", over applying a common-parlance 2024 interpretation to a 1996 statute, is as forceful an argument as you think it is. Either way: I'm at a loss for why you think the ISP lobbyists are more powerful than their opponents here, since their opponents outgun them 40-to-1.
> I'm at a loss for why you think the ISP lobbyists are more powerful than their opponents here
Because despite every definition in the law and past opinions and the test they just came up with there's practically zero logic in the outcome here.
> over applying a common-parlance
Now I know you're not arguing in good faith. I've consistently cited the statutory definitions. I'm not using common parlance in the slightest. I'm using the actual law and their own goddamn tests.
How is my ISP modifying the data I'm posting here in the slightest, in any definition whether that be statutory or common parlance? You've still failed to answer this basic test just like how the courts failed to do so in their opinion.
You’re citing a law that is about allowing the RBOCs to again provide local phone service as evidence of legislative intent around regulating ISPs. None of this is as straightforward as you’d like it to be.
ISPs are the splitting image of if not literally the same people as the RBOCs. They do essentially the exact same thing RBOCs did in '96 today. In '96 "give this signal to 456-7890", today I say "give this packet to 45.67.89.0.
Around '96, what people thought of as ISPs (CompuServ, Prodigy, AOL, etc) were the modern Googles and Netflix and Spotify and Hacker News. Now ISPs are far more like the RBOCs, managing the lines and handling the "switching" and enabling the box at my home to talk to the box at Hacker News.
Back then, AOL was my ISP. They modified my query for a keyword to give me informaation. This was on top of the lines SBC managed. Today, AT&T manages the lines I use to punch into a search engine to retrieve information. What is AT&Ts role today more like, AOLs or SBC? Think for yourself for two seconds on this one! It's an easy answer!
If anything, you throwing RBOCs into this strengthens the argument for reclassification of ISPs as telecommunications providers instead of information services. It's illogical to see otherwise.
Finally let me requote the standard this fucking court gave us and you tell me how this opinion makes any sense outside of just consistently saying "cOmMoN ParLaNcE" as some shield that prevents you from using your actual brain to understand words on the law.
> In short, an “information service” manipulates data, while a “telecommunications service” does not.
How is my ISP manipulating this data, right here, right now?! Please answer this!
I was out at dinner and couldn't respond to this, but, and I'm sorry about this, my response to this last comment is that you're not actually responding to anything I said. You feel like the Telecommunications Act of 1996 should have, in spirit if not in black letters, established an authority for the FCC to enforce "net neutrality". Well, I was there in 1996, literally operating a large ISP, and I can tell you: no, it did not. What the Telecommunications Act did was give my ISP access to dial-up POPs all over the Chicagoland area with a single ISDN PRI. It was about deregulating phone service. It had practically nothing to do with the Internet.
> you're not actually responding to anything I said
Projection to the highest degree. I've directly asked you a question four times here; you have never addressed it.
> literally operating a large ISP,
No wonder you can't smell the corruption and the mental pretzels don't bother you.
I'm not arguing about what the law did in 1996. I'm not even fully arguing what an ISP was or a telecommunications provider was in 1996. I'm just asking you to take the words as written in the law, take what an ISP functionally is today, and use an ounce of your own logic and reading comprehension (please!), see which of the two buckets it logically belongs in, and then tell me why.
> In short, an “information service” manipulates data, while a “telecommunications service” does not.
Please, tell me how an ISP is manipulating the information I'm sending outside of doing things to manage a telecommunications service. Please. I'm begging you.
I think one sane way to look at this is that the most reasonable way to look at the concepts of "telecommunications" and "information" are different in 2024 than they were in 1996, and the 1996 interpretation will control.
Later
I didn't see that bit about lobbying in your original comment, but you get that the "other side" of this issue has even more powerful lobbyists, right? Google alone is an order of magnitude more valuable than Verizon and AT&T combined.