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Public Interest Groups Won’t Take Net Neutrality Case to Supreme Court Now
(broadbandbreakfast.com)
this post was submitted on 09 Aug 2025
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That’s not how capitalism works. The market does not simply tolerate whatever price they “feel like they want”.
Of course. It would be the same as discontinuing the service. There is no business case for downgrading a 56k connection. They either leave the business and give their market share to the competition, or the 56k goes at the speed physics will allow. There is no amount of bandwidth loss dial-up patrons will accept, and also no amount that can be re-allocated to a broadband VIP customer that would be noticed. Makes no sense.
It does not. The neighbor also uses their own supply. Using the neighbor yields less revenue to the company. The injection is a cash cow for the energy company, who resells it for 10× what they pay. Paying the neighbor for their solar is a total loss for the energy company. They lose the cheap power they would get at a cheap injection rate, and they also lose the sale of power to you. The energy company gets less money than they do if neighbors do not collude.
It does not. It’s a flat rate. Unless you are talking about energy. Indeed I use library a/c power, which (unlike Internet) is charged at a measured rate.
Internet is not a measured rate service. It’s a flat fee and budget-capped.
To be significant would be to encroach on budgets. As I said, libraries in my area are clever enough not to blow budgets. Some libraries have timers and quotas to control consumption -- control that is not in play on domestic subscriptions.
Not at all. The guy pulls along an industrial vacuum. He does not have to pull that machine down my street if I am the only one who was littering, and I divert my litter to a street that is already littered. Moving my litter from an otherwise unlittered block to an already littered block has the opposite effect that you claim. Less road coverage requires fewer workers. If everyone in the city puts all their litter on one block instead of scattering it, many street cleaners can be sent home.
This is in fact also necessary for your analogy to be accurate. If concentrating the same qty of litter in a smaller space were by some management’s incompetence lead to more cleaners, then the analogy does not accurately reflect the telecom service.
When you are a unregulated monopoly that's exactly how it works. This is a regulation that was removed.
The 56k isn't the target. Your connection to your ISP continues to be 56k. The tier 1 that your dial up ISP connects to can now play favorites. They can get paid by Reddit to degrade Lemmy traffic. Physics has nothing to do with it.
So it does affect everyone.
More trash on one street means that more service runs would be needed in a day. If the truck fills up and the street isn't finished, another truck must come. If more trash didn't require more clean up in an area, then no special service would be needed after large festivals- regular daily service would handle it.
No, it’s not. Consumers still have a choice in an unregulated “monopoly”. Also, “monopoly” is not the correct word, hence the quotes. You’re speaking emotionally because you don’t like the options. Even if there were a monopoly hypothetically, people still have the choice in the US to abstain from subscribing.
Consumers typically have a choice between cable, DSL, fiber, WISP, satellite, dial-up, freeloading (libraries, universities, hacker spaces, cafes, etc), or no service at all (which is the most important option of all).
Your distorted view that a capitalist market does not control pricing is based in part on your misperception of monopoly.
Doesn’t matter. No Lemmy throttling is falling below 56k. Hence why physics matters (it’s the only bottleneck of concern to dial-up users).
Of course. Boycotts are inherently sacrificial. Why would think otherwise?
It takes 2—4 people to clean up in under 2 hours precisely because automation and machines become economically viable.
Take that same litter and scatter it city-wide. 4 cleanup workers can’t even walk the whole city, or even jog the city, much less pick anything up. It does not make sense to use a shovel to pick up a cigarette butt. They use meter-long tongs. They aim the tip to straddle the cigarette butt, pinch. Sometimes I drops as they lift it, and they have to have another go. One item at a time. Then they walk ~2 meters for the next cigarette butt. A shovel for each piece of litter is too heavy and expends too much energy. So tongs makes sense for scattered litter.
When event trash is concentrated, one man’s shovel load does the work of 50 people scattered around the city. All those people need breaks too. It requires a staff of hundreds to cleanup a city-wide scattering of the same amount of litter, and still that’s over the course of multiple days. So you are off by at least 2 orders of magnitude.
Your dial up provider does not have an end to end connection. Tier 1 isps sit in-between all traffic. It doesn't matter what dial up/cable/DSL provider you switch to because they all route through the same tier 1 providers.
Your suggestion to don't use the Internet was refuted at the very start when I explained that some government services, in particular schools, require internet for communication.
Lemmy isn't throttled because no one is paying them to do so. They can now legally throttle it below 56k. Physics has absolutely nothing to do with it.
If the electric company shuts off your electricity, the physics of your led light bulbs using less energy means nothing.
Because up until now you argued the opposite.
Irrelevant to your original argument that there was no effect. Which is besides the point because you already gave up arguing that your library use wouldn't affect everyone of everyone did it. -Which doesn't make it an option given that Internet is required by some government agencies such as schools.
Your attempt failed when you failed to realise the reduction in revenue. They lose my subscription fee but the library does not have to pay the difference in excess of their costs.
Then your claim was bogus to begin with. I addressed the /potential/ scenario that you suggested; I never claimed that your suggestion was reality, just that it was flawed.
It’s not the law the prevents the throttling. It’s the marketplace. The physical limit is low enough that it is the min tolerance the market will accept. Physical limits and marketplace limits are relevant, but legal rights to throttle are irrelevant when the dialup market won’t accept less than physical limits.
I never claimed a boycott is not sacrificial. I have advocated for boycotting, but that does not mean it’s not a sacrifice. Hence why I mentioned will power in the OP. Boycotts have consequences, which I accept.
Your analogy has failed you. Your litter analogy supports the reality contrary to your thesis. Revenue is reduced when people consolidate their consumption with fewer flat-rate subscriptions. Just as litter cleanup has reduced costs in concentrations that need less infrastructure.
Re: reduction in revenue.
You admitted that everyone using the library would increase costs to the library. Internet is required. Schools communicate with text messages. Everyone using the library is not a solution.
You don't understand how the Internet works.
The ability for intermediary networks to interfere with Internet traffic isn't bogus. That is why the FSF has and is fighting for it.
Companies do not act as idealized politically neutral agents. For example right wing media has distorted news reporting because it is what the owner wants despite the loss in profit from alienating part of their customers. A tier 1 network can now restrict content both for profit (a competitor pays the tier 1's to shut down the competition) or simply because the owner wants it despite the lost profits.
Your claim that your littering causes absolutely no social cost is absurd. Every dodge you have used failed.
Your math and memory are both failing you. I said: “They lose my subscription fee but the library does not have to pay the difference in excess of their costs.”
That’s the same for everyone. If 1000 people cancel their $40/month subscriptions and go to the library, the library costs do not increase by $40,000/month to offset the loss, even if you forgot that library consumption per person is less than always-online domestic usage per person.
W.r.t your memory failure, I said I alone do not increase the library costs. Conflating /myself/ with /everyone/ neglects the math above.
FSF is not in the slightest worried about Lemmy being throttled below 56k. If they were, it would indicate inability to understand how business works. FSF is fighting for reasons you don’t understand if you think the concern is throttling Lemmy below analog modem speeds.
You should really avoid analogies.
Tier 1 is too far up the supply chain to have the effect that you think it does. The netneutrality battle matters most to consumers on the last mile of transmission lines which determines the contracts. Worrying about tier 1 is like worrying about what is happening in Guatamala or El Salvador when you buy coffee on the world market, while ignoring the local market. But in any case, if your flawed understanding of how the Internet works leaves you fixated on tier 1 and you want to focus on that, boycotting is still the best move if you have the will power to walk. Boycotting the retail end of the transaction also boycotts tier 1, even if you hypthetically watch Netflix all day at the library instead of at home because the consolidation still yields less oversold unused bandwidth, less fat, and less revenue for the industry.
Yet you fail to support your claim that my use of the library has driven up the library’s cost for their flat rate contract. Your absurd litter analogy failed you because you failed to realise that consolidation of work reduces the work, reduces the infrastructure needed, and reduces the revenue it brings.
The total infrastructure support for 1,000 simultaneous people in a library that was only built for 100 is far greater than that. And it doesn't fix the problem that communication via Internet is required. You can't live at the library.
Again that is a side effect. If reddit paid tier ones to block Lemmy, they now can. I'm focused on tier 1 because that's what actually matters. They are the ones who fought net neutrality. 56k is a side effect, not the target. Having a slower connection means nothing if an intermediate stops packets.
I was president of a mid sized dial up isp. Net neutrality was a non issue then because competition existed. I had no power either way. Customers could switch providers. There were no alternatives to the big tier 1's. Now the tier 1's also own the networks from end to end. Verizon and Comcast control their networks from end to end. You paying for dial up to your local ISP means nothing if Verizon refuses to transmit any data to you.
Stop saying that when we've already proven it's impossible because of government/school communication.
Consolidation reduces the work up to the limit of existing infrastructure. You can litter without affect. Everyone littering means more cleaners are needed. It's why a festival requires far more clean up than regular service. The centralized trash from the festival requires more costs than regular trash service.
We've already covered this.
It's why you can use the library, but it isn't an option if all 10,000 people in a village needed to use it at the same time. Which is beside the point that families with children living at the library isn't an option. Schools communicate through the Internet.
It’s not simultaneous. 1000 people boycotting does not mean they all leave their homes and enter the library at the same time. Libraries are scalable (not limited to 100). They control the upper limit of the scale as well with timers.
Works for me. I am living proof that occasional Internet access from the library is possible.
They cannot. You’re again fixated on what’s legally possible, not how the market works. Reddit could not pay tier 1’s enough money to block Lemmy and offset the market consequences of that move.
That’s a false cause fallacy. Comcast fought net neutrality because for their retail business, not tier 1 business.
Exactly. It’s not the target. As I said, you cannot market a dial-up connection that is artificially crippled. And you cannot cripple the speeds across the board enough to affect 56k connections.
Nonsense. I am proof that boycotting is viable. I am living by the boycott. I can communicate with my gov just fine. I also communicate with researchers at universities just fine without paying Internet subscriptions and without using other institutions bandwidth that was not oversold.
Indeed.
The already exposed brokeness of your analogy continues to escape you. As already pointed out, the analogy is inaccurate if you assume no one litters to begin with. Everyone is already using the Internet. They would be effectively be moving their litter from being scattered to consolidated. The same litter in one place reduces the amount of infra needed, not increases. There is no longer a need to maintain all those comms lines citywide if no one uses them.
It’s far less effort.
Yes we have. How can you still fail to grasp this? 2-4 people cleanup after a festival in <2 hours. That same litter scattered citywide needs a staff of hundreds working days. It’s not even close. As I already established, you’re off by at least 2 orders of magnitude.
If you cannot support a network for 10k people in a small place, it’s a failure of your competency, not physics. A “library” need not be a single building. 10k people would be using a combination of libraries and campuses, in the unlikely event that you manage to find 10k people with the will power to boycott. You are well in the realm of pure fantasy at this point because Americans would have no hope of escaping their own intolerance for inconvenience on that scale. You simply will not find 10k people in any given city with the will power to boycott anything at all, much less something that serves as a daily convenience. But if you do, you’re limited only by your competence.
There is nothing that stops students from using libraries and gov buildings. No one needs to “live” at a library.
It does because they need Internet to receive communication about School for their children. Children's homework is also online. The time to build a larger library is measured in years. A timer means the library cannot support everyone but everyone needs the Internet.
I am living proof that all hospitals can be closed. (I haven't needed to be in a hospital since childhood) Your argument is ridiculous. We are talking about the potential affect of net neutrality on everyone. That you personally can function without it doesn't mean everyone can.
That needs to be built. The current infrastructure cannot support everyone using the public library.
It's not will power when it is required by schools and the government.
Not simultaneously. The library operates all day long. Different people have different schedules.
Bad idea. But not everyone has kids. Not all kids have homework. Not all homework requires the cloud. Not all homework must be done the same day it is assigned.
You sound like Trump’s lawyer, who could put together a logical argument, and so was just left with declaring “rediculous”. Can’t pound the law.. cannot pound any facts or evidence... so you are left pounding the table.
I am not functioning without Internet. I am using the Internet in a sacrificial way without feeding the infra. I am not streaming movies and using all the convenience frills that pushovers are addicted to.
It only needs to be built if 10k people actually have the will power to boycott. And in that case the affluent users and the poor users are treated equally by the library, unlike the boot-licking action you advocate for where wealthy people can buy their way to superior access from the comfort of their homes.
Citation needed on the government mandate that you have Internet installed in your home. It’s will power because access from your sofa and home office is a matter of convenience.
And people need to receive communications before and after school hours. Many libraries aren't even open on Sunday.
Not everyone needs a hospital. Shut them down.
That's not an argument. It is a veiled personal attack.
It is as weird insult for you to use because you have been defending this Trump ruling to deregulate large Internet corporations.
You have been supporting the Trump ruling to allow Internet providers to price service whatever they want. They are now allowed to interfere with traffic that had already been paid for. Trump had already executive ordered that cheap Internet to poor communities must be stopped.
There is a reason mail service is socialized.
And? Are you trying to imply that library hours are a total subset of school hours, making it impossible for students to access libraries? If so, that’d be a quite dysfunctional library system you have.
You have a democracy. Use it. Stop making excuses and demand better.
I have access to an unstaffed library on Sunday. The library card unlocks the door.
Nonsense. “Rediculous” is not an argument. You have failed in presenting facts and logic that support your claims. Attempting to claim my ideas are “rediculous” is a baseless ad homenim. Pointing out your lack of sound logic is not.
It’s the other way around. You have lost track of the thesis. The boycott opposes Trump’s action and the corps interests. Your opposition to the boycott is the boot licking pro-Trump stance.
Library hours are limited. Where I live they are open 10am to 9pm. They are closed on Holidays. They are closed when the rather is bad. I checked in Grenoble which I'm slightly familiar with and librarys there are closed on Sundays.
That makes it completely impossible to receive morning schedule changes.
Yes. And what are you doing yo do about it? Suggest that it should be privatized and deregulated like the Internet so that it magically becomes free?
But you have been arguing against regulating! I guess I should boycott libraries too until they change?
Do you need me to go back and quote you where you repeatedly defended Trump's deregulation because high speed Internet customers would subsidize cheaper service?
"Netneutrality is not going to cause dial-up customers to lose even more performance. If anything, they might even fair better because the ISP will be able to bring in more profits which could increase the effect of subsidy from higher payers."
What was the response when you complained? Try city council.
No, it just means you cannot sit in a chair inside the library to get your morning schedule changes. Any wi-fi you traverse in the morning will do the job.
I personally use hacker spaces and universities in moments when libraries fail to serve.
Libraries are already the right price for me. But if you’re getting fucked on the price, knock yourself out asking for privatization but I can’t see that improving anything. You would still be asking the same people to broaden the operating hours, but they would have to alter a contract.
No I haven’t. You are really lost here. I never said anything of the kind. By now you should know that I advocate boycotting. Whether you boycott or not has nothing to do with the extent they are regulated.
Not sure why you think a boycott affects a public resource. Unlike a private sector boycott, your lack of relationship does not cost the library. You would have to get nearly /everyone/ to boycott the library just to make the case that it should be shut down due to lack of use. You have a better chance of just asking for morning hours, after convincing them that the local university library is also closed in the mornings.
Yes, I do.
Is that the quote you think defends deregulation? Your mother tongue is apparently not English. Nothing in that quote endorses deregulation. It simply supports the claim deregulation harms broadband users but not narrowband users. Harm to either is harm nonetheless.
Re: State governments require communication via Internet.
"The second-largest state in the country will have required e-filing in civil trial-court cases by 2016."
https://www.rcfp.org/journals/state-courts-continue-move/#%3A%7E%3Atext=Small+claims+lawsuits+in+Plymouth%2Cthan+half+a+million+people.
Your lawyer does the filing, not you. So no problem if you boycott having Internet at home. If you need to file pro se in Texas, it’s shitty indeed that there is no analog mechanism but at least you have the library. And the court itself probably has machines you can use. Otherwise, there is a human rights issue in Texas if court access is exclusively for people who have property (i.e. PCs).
That was a single example from a link I gave you with dozens of examples from multiple states from 10 years ago.
It also included states that require online filing for small claims and landlord tenant disputes.
Internet is cheaper than a lawyer.
The only interesting state was Texas because the other states have offline filing, which makes them entirely irrelevant.
You’ve misunderstood the article. Only Texas has the requirement.
This is a false dichotomy. You need not choose between the two. If you opt out of the lawyer, free public wi-fi is cheaper than Internet delivered to your home.