FFTF promises lame duck session activism to force discharge petition, regardless of today's election results

Fight for the Future (FFTF) does have a significant Medium account and blog, to which it posted today, saying it will fight to execute a discharge petition in the House by mid December regardless of the outcome of today’s elections. 

  

However it is apparent that if the Democrats take at least the House, the next Congress would be more favorable to reversing Ajit Pai’s action than is the current one.

  

FFTF still has its crowdfunding page, linked on the blog post.

   

The Washington Post, on Monday, in an editorial linked in Monday’s “Bill on Major Issues” post, compared the behavior of tech companies in removing some offensive sites from access to domain name registrar and hosting, to what net neutrality claims it wants to prevent.  That’s interesting. The activism on the far Left against hate speech could be applied to telecoms to deny connection to some sites if net neutrality were not restored.

Would 5G really be as good as fiber-optic in hard-to-serve areas? Telecom wants you to think so

Ernesto Falcon of Electronic Frontier Foundation has an article critical of the behavior of telecom companies in pressing 5G as a solution for rural areas – it is supposed to be as good as normal cable Internet – so that it doesn’t have to invest more in fiber optic-to-home service.  

  

Does this affect network neutrality?  Maybe.  If the services they finally supply are not as good as they could have been, they could have more incentive for throttling in the future.

Vermont passes net neutrality law for state contractors, and they sue back!

Now big telecom is suing the state of Vermont over a new net neutrality law that applies only to companies trying to get state contracts.  Jon Brodkin reports. 

  

It does sound like Vermont will stand its ground legally.  And the state keeps looking for workers.

Sorry, the picture is Mount Washington, NH, July 2011. 

Comcast complains about California's net neutrality law, and it may really have a valid point

Jon Brodkin writes for Ars Technica that Comcast complains that its revenue will go down under California’s net neutrality law, due to go into effect Jan. 1 unless stopped.

  

Comcast (and ATT) want the ability to charge very large intermediaries like Cogent more to make efficient connections.  But Comcast’s complaint would not affect “ordinary” websites.  But transit companies like Cogent claim they are actually carrying traffic for free. 

The New York State attorney general is looking for evidence of fraud in more than 22 million comments supposedly submitted to the FCC in 2017, New York Times story by Nicholas Confessore. 

DOJ announces suit against California over state net neutrality law

Here’s a one-two punch.

First, California finally passes and Gov. Jerry Brown signs the nation’s toughest network neutrality law, as Heather Kelly reports on CNN.  

The bill seems particularly strict on ideas like zero-rated data usage for services owned by the telecom.

But telecom providers want uniform federal law, they say.

So, as The Switch Blog on the Washington Post, in a story by Brian Fung and Tony Romm report, the "Trumpist" United States Department of Justice announced late Sunday night that it would sue the state of California, claiming that Congress had given only the FCC the authority to hold a lever on net neutrality laws.

Electronic Frontier Foundation has some detailed analysis by Ernesto Falcon on how the DC Circuit will play a critical role, here. 

  

I expect I’ll see emails from FTFF on this one.

New York Times sues FCC over FoIA non-compliance with turning over possible Russian meddling with comment period in 2017

Jon Brodkin of Ars Technica reports that the New York Times has sued the FCC for its refusal to turn over records, based on the Freedom of Information Act, concerning possible Russian meddling during the comments phase of its 2017 process to eliminate Obama-era network neutrality rules. The link is here. 

   

There are some indications of DDoS attacks on FCC servers during the comments, and attempts to hide pro-neutrality comments. Russians could have had the sinister desire of wanting to wind up with a system were telecoms block individual speakers or small organizations.  That really doesn't seem to be happening. 

California's net neutrality bill poses the "federalist" question as to whether the states will take back the issue

Cecilia Kang has a long article “California bill sets up a fight on net access” Saturday, Sept. 1, here.  As of the time of writing, Gov. Jerry Brown had not yet signed it.

  

The bill apparently gave net neutrality “activists” all that “they” were seeking. Telecoms apparently cannot offer free streaming for apps, out of apparent deference to smaller publishers that don’t have the pull to offer the same. Normal streaming services would be offered at the same quality. Telecoms did not get some contingent capacity to throttle in the future if they wanted to.