21
votes
SCOTUS Justice Clarence Thomas argues for regulating large internet platforms as common carriers
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- Title
- Justice Thomas argues for making Facebook, Twitter and Google utilities
- Published
- Apr 5 2021
- Word count
- 535 words
Can we get actual physical facilities-based ISPs declared as common carriers too then while we're at it? I can't believe we might see Facebook and Twitter declared common carriers before Comcast and Verizon. If we're going to do this to the services running on the internet, why are the physical internet lines still exempt?
I’m definitely not fond of large cellular/internet service providers, but none of them block you from connecting with people using other service providers (thanks to a previous generation of common carriers regulation), so there’s at least in-principle potential for market mechanisms to sort things out.
Regardless, the literal physical network analog to telephone service not being treated as a common carrier while services running on top of it are just seems utterly illogical to me. Market mechanisms don't work all that great when you have a duopoly or a functional monopoly on the service providers themselves, though.
Having worked for one of said mega-ISPs in the past, they absolutely would do that if they thought they could get away with it. It's the old "we don't care, we don't have to, we're the
phone companyISP" attitude.Making web services common carriers without making ISPs themselves ones as well just reeks of blatant political goals on the part of Thomas and his party as a whole. If Facebook can be analogized to the telephone wires, what argument can be used to say that the fiber/coax/twisted pair lines that deliver internet service are not? In the case of twisted pair, they're literally the same lines that are common carriers for voice data sent over them, but once it's internet data it's not, apparently.
I just don't see how that makes any sense at all.
Yup. Wires are a natural monopoly. Nationalize them or heavily regulate them and lease access out to ISPs.
Worked well enough for dialup, will work 10x better for broadband.
The actual written statement is also quite readable, and raises interesting questions. https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/20579870/order-list-04_05_2021.pdf
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In my opinion, breaking vertical integration to settle on a common federated protocol plus competing front end services is probably a very healthy move for the longer term (much like what happened with the telephone). It’s interesting to see that this matter has garnered sufficient thought cycles at the very highest levels (also, about damn time!), leading to the above statement which is probably intended to clarify (a partial understanding of the SC’s take on) the current landscape, for lower courts and legislators.
If only the legislators would, you know, legislate so it wasn't up to the courts deciding this decades overdue based on (necessarily) old laws that didn't consider this.
When laws are hundreds or thousands of pages, they're almost always technology specific. As technology develops ever quicker, that in itself is a huge problem.
I think it's very interesting Thomas is the author of the opinion. It seems almost written to get at public debate on the issue with language like this section:
I have to say it's surprising that even someone as conservative as Thomas then immediately goes on to elaborate:
The ruling was surprisingly uplifting news for those of us in networking in various ways.
Even a perfectly aligned congress in in some utopic would wouldn't be fast enough to keep up with legislation given how fast tech advances. I imagine it took decades to fully settle how phone lines worked as well. And we STILL don't have anything concerning cable lines.