No, the court never reaches these because the court holds that “a provider need only offer the ‘capability’ of manipulating information (in the ways recited in that subsection) to offer an ‘information service’ under § 153(24)” and “Even under the FCC's narrower interpretation of ‘capability,’ Broadband Internet Access Providers allow users, at minimum, to ‘retrieve’ information stored elsewhere.”
So even allowing users the capability of retrieving information is sufficient because the definition of an information service is “the offering of a capability for generating, acquiring, storing, transforming, processing, retrieving, utilizing, or making available information via telecommunications, and includes electronic publishing, but does not include any use of any such capability for the management, control, or operation of a telecommunications system or the management of a telecommunications service.”
But an ISP, as it's core offering, doesn't offer me the capability to retrieve information. It gives me the ability to send some packets and maybe get a response. It is the information services like Hacker News that actually gives me the capability to post a comment and read replies.
One might as well argue the power company is an information service, since they offer me the capability to run the modem and power my computer.
Loper Bright is only relevant here as the case that opened the door for the appeals court to more easily overturn the FCC. The case itself was not related to the FCC and isn't the source of any of the absurdity in this appeals court ruling.
Yes: that's what Loper Bright does. In the absence of explicit statutory language to the contrary, the FCC can no longer assert its interpretation of the spirit of a law about allowing RBOCs to once again provide local POTS phone service as a broad mandate to regulate the Internet.
So even allowing users the capability of retrieving information is sufficient because the definition of an information service is “the offering of a capability for generating, acquiring, storing, transforming, processing, retrieving, utilizing, or making available information via telecommunications, and includes electronic publishing, but does not include any use of any such capability for the management, control, or operation of a telecommunications system or the management of a telecommunications service.”