[icefo]

I'm hopeful as the judge seems to understand the ISP strategy:

> Mendez reportedly was not swayed by ISPs' claims that a net neutrality law isn't necessary because they haven't been blocking or throttling Internet traffic.

> "I have heard that argument and I don't find it persuasive," Mendez said, according to The Hollywood Reporter. "It's going to fall on deaf ears. Everyone has been on their best behavior since 2018, waiting for whatever happened in the DC Circuit [court case over the FCC's repeal of net neutrality]. I don't place weight on the argument that everything is fine and we don't need to worry."

[JulianMorrison]

Suing to block a law rather undermines the argument "we had no plans to break it".

[unishark]

That isn't quite what they said though, at least in the quoted text. They said they had no plans to block or throttle internet traffic. Regulations can have a broad effect limiting what businesses can do in a variety of ways beyond the narrow effect that is used to justify it. This law also includes prioritizing traffic and other things according to the article.

[salawat]

Eh, I wouldn't be so quick to hide under that tree for protection in the lightning rich environment of civil rights violations as a whole.

I think laws should be challenged in order to force coming to terms with second and higher order effects, and as a matter of course be measured and revisited for reconsideration over time.

That being said, from a heuristic driven, rhetorically defensive perspective, I totally get, and second your perspective in this case.

The "Thou dost protest too much" bell is strong with this one.

[shmerl]

Exactly. This attack on the law itself demonstrates their intent.

[fastball]

On the one hand yes, on the other hand laws intended to prevent some behavior are usually less efficient than participants just not doing that behavior, and add extra overhead to the people whom you're worried about doing that behavior.

[buran77]

It's hard to justify expensive litigation to block a law preventing you from something you weren't doing or intending to do anyway. The only reason to spend all that time, effort, and money is to at the very least make sure the door is open for you to do such things in the future. Or worse, to keep doing them as we speak.

[bko]

I think the risk is that there will be more direct involvement by the governments in dictating what the ISP can and cannot show.

Politician's already criticize big tech for not doing enough to censor and remove fake news. I could see this laying the ground work for further involvement. Because "allow all legitimate content" can turn into disallow "illegitimate" content on the ISP level

[fastball]

Again, not necessarily true.

Frequently, legislation intended to block things doesn't just say "this is illegal now – don't do it". It frequently includes things like reporting requirements to ensure that you are not doing these things without the government having to constantly keep tabs on you (and obviously hefty fines / etc if your reports are found to be inaccurate).

These reporting requirements (and other, similar requirements that usually accompany such legislation) can be an expensive hassle, possibly more expensive than "expensive litigation". The case only needs to be litigated once, while something like reporting requirements continue in perpetuity.

[buran77]

Going through the text of the bill [0] the ISP challenge I found nothing that implies such burdens on the them. If they exist in some other text I am not aware of them. Until shown otherwise I can reasonably assume ISPs simply fight a law that prevents them now and in the future from doing something that is financially advantageous to them, despite being disadvantageous to the regular consumer.

[0] https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml...

[bko]

Wouldn't this prevent someone like t-mobile to offer a deal in which netflix streaming doesn't count towards their data cap before throttling? It limits their ability to strike deals like this with content providers. But I guess that's the point?

[ska]

> usually less efficient than participants just not doing that behavior

This has a terrible track record whenever there is a significant financial incentive for participants to do the thing.

[freeone3000]

This argument is akin to saying a law against murder is unnecessary because you haven't killed anyone. It is unpersuasive in the utmost.

[proverbialbunny]

It's also a lie. AT&T currently has a slow lane. Eg, I have fiber gigabit duplex, but for encrypted uploads to unknown servers, I get throttled to 10mbps. This restricts VPN traffic to many companies, including mine 10 miles away. This also restricts bit torrent traffic, and AT&T employs some sort of Sandvine like service that sends disconnect messages to users downloading from AT&T.

As far as I know AT&T has not created a slow lane for download speeds, which is why most people probably do not notice.

[drivebycomment]

There are many possible reasons for a network traffic between two endpoints to not saturate your connection throughput to your ISP, and unless you can rule out all those other reasons, you can't just conclude that the lower throughput is due to any kind of deliberate throttling. I'm not saying they are NOT throttling. I'm just saying what you said is not enough evidence.

It's true Comcast has been caught doing a packet forgery - https://www.eff.org/wp/packet-forgery-isps-report-comcast-af... . If ATT is also doing it, it should be straightforward to collect evidence. So is there any evidence collected that shows ATT is doing packet forgery ?

[throwaway7644]

I was wondering if I was the only one having that issue. It's a shame no other company in my area offers 1000Mbs duplex because when it does work, it's great.

[kingnothing]

This must be regional. I also have AT&T Fiber and have not experienced any throttling under any circumstances, regardless of VPN usage.

[proverbialbunny]

Have you tried seeding something on bit torrent? That's a pretty easy way to tell.

[kingnothing]

Yes, over a VPN. Works fine.

[thehappypm]

Cellular networks, I believe, are allowed to throttle.

[mywittyname]

If ISPs have no plans to block or throttle internet traffic, then they should have no objections to this ruling...