Gadgetory

net neutrality has another chance to be resurrected from the dead its latest fight to survive is now in the courtroom net neutrality can be a messy topic but here to help us digest what matters in this latest chapter of the saga is seen at senior writer Maggie Reardon thanks for joining us I'm glad to be here alright so right now on the court there's two different sides going on on one side you have Zilla a bunch of Internet companies state attorneys generals trying to fight to keep net neutrality going yes so basically they are fighting against the the FCC's repeal of the rules which they did back in 2017 so they're they're saying they have a bunch of arguments but one of the arguments is that you know the FCC really didn't have any right to repeal these rules and then like the attorneys generals are actually you know picking apart the aspect of the repeal that says that that the FCC preempts any states from passing their own rules this is the the DC Circuit of the Court of Appeals so basically this is like the the appellate system is like right under the the US Supreme Court so there were three judges today who heard nearly five hours of my arguments which is this is unusual for oral arguments even like in an appellate court like they don't usually go on for five hours so I think everybody was just kind of like the bathroom I got to eat something like I mean even even the justices were kind of like this is long let's like speed this up and get through this but but it's a very dense topic and there there was a lot to cover and there were a lot of arguments to go through this is the kind of situation where there was like a clear winner or what are you hearing well I guess sort of the biggest takeaway is yet more uncertainty like we really don't know how this is gonna come down and that's true of most like appeals court decisions because really like the the oral arguments are just like one aspect of this whole case and you know what the justices sort of focus on is a little bit telling but it doesn't tell the whole story they some other procedural challenges that were made as part of this right and so those might be the arguments that end up kind of winning the day and so net neutrality could sort of be saved on a technicality and we can kind of go into some of those yeah and yeah so like one of the issues was this issue of public safety so part of the complaint was that during some of these crazy wildfires that were happening in California Santa Clara firefighters their service was throttled by Verizon now they admit that like that by itself isn't really a net neutrality violation right like they had a service contract with Verizon Verizon could you know just like they can for me I am unlimited service if I use too much they can like throttle me back right that's not a net neutrality issue per se but what they were saying is but now the FCC has basically as part of its repeal of net neutrality like they've abdicated authority for everything because they went hands-off approach they're like not my job it's the Federal Trade Commission's job so Federal Trade Commission you deal with it but what the public safety community is saying is like well but what about us like you didn't even like consider our concerns that maybe there should be some sort of exception for Public Safety and there were a lot of comments in the record and that was something that Judge milette really sort of hammered in on and was asking the FCC like I mean like did you consider this I mean and they didn't really have a very good answer for that so that could be an area where the court says like well at least you should've like considered it you know like show us your work here so because they did it that could have been a technicality that could have been a technicality right and then the other big area is so the FCC repealed like most of the net neutrality rules the one thing they kept is this notion of the transparency rule right that the idea that you guys spelled it out right you just got to tell me right you got to tell the consumer if you're you know get a favor Hulu over Netflix you know the FCC has to cite like what authority it has to to do anything right so they cite this part of the act this sort of little minor part that actually was Congress changed so like the FCC adopted its rule in 2017 they cited the section of the act as their authority for the transparency rule in December then some in the spring Congress updated the act they actually you know took out a little subsection and rewrote the language and then then the rules actually officially came off the books in June so they're basing this off a rule that now no longer is there exactly right now the FCC are used but it still gives us authority and but the what judge Millette sort of really seemed to hone in on is but you didn't stop and like give the public a chance to comment whether or not they thought that this like changed your analysis here right and that's something that's a procedural thing like the FCC you know there was something that was significant that changed from the time they adopted the rule until it went into effect Congress made a change to the law that they were basing it on and they didn't stop to consider whether or not they still had the authority and that could be the technicality that you know kind of like makes the whole thing crumble so where do we sit now after five hours of these arguments now we sit and wait we wait for like four to six months thanks Maggie and thanks for watching that's it for now