Court Rules: Common-Carrier Status Won’t Protect ISPs From FTC Regulation

[Guest]

A federal court has ruled on an FTC vs. AT&T case that threatened to leave telecom providers free to conduct unfair business practices in their broadband services by letting them fall into a regulatory gap.

Court Rules: Common-Carrier Status Won’t Protect ISPs From FTC Regulation : Read more

 

[Math Geek]

good first step i guess. not that the ftc is gonna make any rules against the unfair business practices.

but maybe in the future we'll get some folks in there who aren't swayed by the bags of money being thrown at them by said companies.

 

[TJ Hooker]

Wait, didn't the big ISPs like AT&T lobby against being classified as common carriers by the Obama-era net neutrality laws (and/or lobby in favor of repealing said laws)? Meanwhile apparently fighting a court case against the FTC arguing that they should be treated as common carriers? FFS...

 

[Math Geek]

and of course AT&T was the first to go with the paid traffic rout they swore before congress they had no intention of doing.

said it a million times. no business would spend the millions they did trying to prevent something they never intended to do anyway. waste of money. what's not a waste of money is fighting to be able to do something you really want to do, that of course would make you millions more than you spent ensuring you could do it.

 

[Sakkura]

Wait, didn't the big ISPs like AT&T lobby against being classified as common carriers by the Obama-era net neutrality laws (and/or lobby in favor of repealing said laws)? Meanwhile apparently fighting a court case against the FTC arguing that they should be treated as common carriers? FFS...

I think the idea is their phone business is common-carrier, and they think that should exempt them from FTC regulation even in their (now) non-common-carrier broadband business.

 

[TJ Hooker]

Wait, didn't the big ISPs like AT&T lobby against being classified as common carriers by the Obama-era net neutrality laws (and/or lobby in favor of repealing said laws)? Meanwhile apparently fighting a court case against the FTC arguing that they should be treated as common carriers? FFS...

I think the idea is their phone business is common-carrier, and they think that should exempt them from FTC regulation even in their (now) non-common-carrier broadband business.

Yes, that does sound like the case, but it still seems massively hypocritical and disingenuous of them.

 

[Math Geek]

when you consider their only purpose is to make money, then it's not really hypocritical of them. they are simply doing whatever they have to in order to make the most money. the problem arises when the pursuit of profit leads to abusive and non-competitive practices. that's what the various regulatory bodies exists to keep in check.

our current issue is that these same companies get to buy the people that create the rules. thus guaranteeing that none of these agencies do their intended job. in fact, they actually do the opposite of their job by creating rules in favor of these abusive and non-competitive practices.

the last resort and main purpose of the checks and balances part of our government is the court system which gets to weigh in on whether the rules bought by the companies are in fact consistent with the way the country is supposed to function.

they have spoken yet again saying that clearly it is supposed to be a certain way that it is not. not that any of it is going to make a difference since the companies in question still own the policy makers and will still make rules that favor themselves (they literally draft the proposals and hand them to the policy makers to bring forward). so long as each POTUS gets to change leadership of all the agencies to those who will be yes men for them, nothing will ever really get done. we got some net-neutrailty rules made, then the next guy comes in and dumps em right away. the next guy will change em back and so on and so on. the people will ALWAYS lose in this type of system.