I think you have this backwards, if I'm reading your thrust properly. The whole deal here is: if the Internet backbone is itself a telecommunications service, then maybe (but: probably not) the FCC can make up new rules about Internet service. If the Telecommunications Act of 1996 sees Internet service as something built on top of raw telecom circuits --- which I think it kind of clearly does? --- the FCC has no such power.

> If the Telecommunications Act of 1996 sees Internet service as something built on top of raw telecom circuits --- which I think it kind of clearly does?

Does it? We have definitions for "information service" that clearly fit running a server, and "telecommunication service" defined in a way that clearly fits carrying data over wires, unmodified, and some potential gray area in between that might include looking up information to figure out how to correctly route other information.

You've repeatedly emphasized the "offering a capability" angle, and so does the court. On the subject of capabilities offered by ISPs, the court says:

> they offer a “feature[] permitting” consumers to stream videos stored on Netflix’s servers, [...] the “ability” to purchase gifts from information stored on Amazon’s servers, [...] the “capacity” to view posts stored on Facebook’s servers, [...] and the “power” to conduct a search using Google’s servers

But the court pretends that this piece of capability (feature/ability/capacity/power) being offered by ISPs (as opposed to Netflix, Amazon, et. al. who actually run the servers) is not exactly the telecommunications service the FCC seeks to regulate as a telecommunications service. The court appears to believe that merely being able to use the word "capability" to describe ISPs (while implicitly lumping together functions performed by ISPs with those performed by Netflix, et. al.) is sufficient to make ISPs not telecommunications services.

Again, I would come back at you and say that you are talking about the Internet as if it was something markedly different from CompuServe, Prodigy, and AOL. Obviously, it is, but I don't think that distinction was legible to the authors of the 1996 act. Meanwhile: the courts, post-Chevron, are going to look at the text of the act in its 1996 context, without deferring to agencies about what the spirit of that act was.

This is a whole thread of people over and over and over again saying that the courts should read the 1996 Telecommunications Act in light of what telecommunications looks like in 2025 (or what they, 2025 practitioners, believe a 1996 practitioner should have thought --- as a former 1996 practitioner my response to that is: LOL). That's exactly what the post-Chevron courts are not going to do.

So far as I know, this distinction made it to SCOTUS just once (and: in the 21st century!), and when it did, the court said: the Internet is like Prodigy, CompuServe, and AOL.

You're using the term "the Internet" to refer to a combination of ISPs and endpoint services operated by other companies. That is very analogous to the combination of AOL and the Bell system connecting your modem to AOL's modem.

But broadband ISPs today occupy the place of the Bell system, plus some of the lower layers of AOL, and broadband ISPs do not occupy the place of the higher layers of AOL (the search engines, content publishing, etc.).

AOL without any means for your modem to reach AOL's modem is roughly similar to the World Wide Web without any ISP to carry your packets to and from somebody else's servers. (And I've long believed we need stronger regulations to make it clear that ISPs are responsible for providing more than just WWW access.)

Broadband ISPs today, you say.

As opposed to broadband ISPs in 1996? Do you not think a Senator from 1996 would readily lump today's Google Fiber in the same category as an ISDN provider in 1996?

Do you somehow think that the overturning of Chevron means that courts do not need to figure out where the role of Google Fiber today fits into the categories defined in 1996?

No, I do not, and, more importantly, nothing in the definitions section of the Act would dictate that. Yes: I do think that Loper means that courts aren't going to do this kind of freelancing anymore.

> Yes: I do think that Loper means that courts aren't going to do this kind of freelancing anymore.

And yet, the court seems to have rendered a decision. They don't seem to have declared that the question is not theirs to answer.

Sorry, you're right. I spoke imprecisely. The courts aren't going to allow the regulatory state to do this kind of freelancing anymore. The courts themselves will continue to produce judge-made law, of course. Which is Kagan's complaint in her Loper dissent.

> Internet service as something built on top of raw telecom circuits

My service agreement with my ISP explicitly says it is a circuit.

And also the argument isn't if it's an Internet service or a telecommunications service, it's if it's an information service or telecommunications service. Quit throwing your own common parlance terminology here and use the language in the law and the courts please!

The text of your service agreement has exactly zero to do with this dispute.

It's entirely the center of this dispute. What is it that I'm actually paying my ISP for? I'm paying them for a telecommunications circuit. I'm not paying them because they host or manipulate data I care about, I pay them so I can telecommunicate with actual information services.

If the Telecommunications Act of 1996 saw the internet of 1996 as built on top of raw telecom circuits, that might have something to do with the fact that it was. Nowadays, it's the other way around: the telecoms system is built on top of raw internet circuits.