Federal judge has just cleared
the way for California to enforce
its net neutrality law, potentially
setting the stage for other states
nationwide to follow suit and adopt
tough new protections of their own.
So this is a positive update guys
because while there are certain
things that we wish the Biden
administration were better on,
at least we know that
the Justice Department under
the Biden administration isn't
going to serve as an obstacle to
California implementing its net
neutrality laws.
That is what happened though under
the Trump administration.
But luckily they're not a problem
when it comes to this issue
any longer.
So judge John Mendez at the US
district court for
the Eastern district of California
denied a motion for preliminary
injunction brought by the group of
Internet Service Providers that had
sued to stop the 2018 state law
from going into effect, okay.
So ISPs were like, no, we finally
won in this net neutrality battle.
And so we're going to do what we
can to block individual states from
implementing their own regulations.
And again, this was something that
was allowed to happen under Trump's
justice department but
not any longer, California enacted
its open Internet law known as
SB-822 in September of 2018 months
after Trump eliminated the national
net neutrality protections.
It wasn't Trump specifically, but
it was a Trump appointed FCC chair
Wo Ajit who decided to scrap
the net neutrality regulations.
And the DOJ under Biden has dropped
the DOJ lawsuits against California
this month,
which again paves the way for
them to implement this new law.
And so here's what the judge said
to the lawyers representing the
ISPs, let's say SB-822 is enjoined.
And thanks to the recent repeal of
federal net neutrality rules
there is no power by the FCC
to regulate your clients.
Why shouldn't a court be concerned
if there is no regulation over
ISPs?
And real quick just so you guys
know what SB-822 is or what
the language of this regulation is.
It's a protection against
Internet Service Providers blocking
and throttling traffic while going
even further than the FCC ever did
by attacking a practice known as
zero rating whereby a telecom data
provider doesn't count
the consumption of its owned
content against an individual
subscribers data plan.
Meaning if you're an AT&T
subscriber, you can watch as
much HBO Max as you want
without a counting toward your cap.
And unfortunately some of the these
ISPs have already started
implementing these awful data caps.
And so under this regulation in
California, if the content is owned
by the Internet Service provider,
then you watching that content and
using data to watch that
content shouldn't count toward your
data cap.
So California does do some
things right.
And I totally agree with this
regulation.
I hope that it spreads
across the country.
>> I agree. It's good news.
But I'm going to be a bit
of a Debbie Downer for
a bit on a couple of things.
>> No. [CROSSTALK]
You're Debbie Downer.
>> It's good that a state
has passed something like this.
>> It's impressive
that California has I
imagine there's probably a lot of
lobbying money on the other side.
But I can also think of how there
might be a good amount
of lobbying money on this side.
And so that is good.
And more importantly,
perhaps I guess you acknowledging
that the new DOJ is is not going to
be aggressively trying to take down
state efforts that might
piggyback on this.
My concern comes in two forms.
One is how reproducible will this
be in other states?
Will there be a lot of other
states that will be able to pass
something like this and
not have a massive amount of ISP or
even potentially content provider
money flooding in to influence
the passage of a bill like that.
That's one concern.
And the other is that having a good
DOJ is good.
Having the right law would
be much better.
And while the DOJ isn't going to
be an impediment to the state laws,
the continued
existence the filibuster is very
much going to be an impediment.
To passing good legislation.
So I feel like we should have some
big whiteboard of all of the things
that Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema
are currently denying us and
nationwide net neutrality is likely
one of those things.
No, maybe it's something that
you can get enough Republicans
to cross over on.
But I I don't necessarily have
a ton of faith in that.
>> I just don't have a ton of faith
in Congress and
you're right to bring up the fact
that the way that these regulations
are now happening,
in the case of California for
instance, aren't as foolproof
as codifying the regulations
through congressional action.
But as we know with the gridlock in
Congress and the unwillingness for
easily bribable lawmakers to
do the right thing.
It's just unlikely that we're
going to have that security and
I do think that some
states are going to have a much
more difficult time passing these
types of protections compared to
other states.
And let's also not forget the fact
that while the DOJ might be great
on this issue now, it's not
going to be the same DOJ forever.
I mean, it's going to change based
on which administration is
in office,
which administration is in power.
And that certainly worries
me as well.
And by the way,
the judge did address this.
So the judge said that this
decision today is a legal decision
and shouldn't be viewed
in a political lens.
I'm not expressing anything
on the soundness of the policy that
might be better resolved
by Congress than by federal courts.
But increasingly, we're relying
more and more on federal courts
because of the absolute dysfunction
of Congress.
And I agree with you, John.
One of the biggest issues is
the filibuster, which on day one of
the new Congress, I really do think
that the Democratic senators should
have fought hard to,
nuke that filibuster.
Because it's going to continue to
be a huge problem when it comes to
passing substantive policies that
this country needs.