Net neutrality and States' rights

Lawmakers in at least six state governments have introduced legislation to preserve the rules, and legislators in other states are in the process of considering their own net neutrality bills.

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As of Friday, California, Washington, New York, Rhode Island, Nebraska and Massachusetts have all introduced net neutrality. North Carolina and Illinois are mulling similar legislation.

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The push comes after the FCC voted in December in favor of Chairman Ajit Pai’s plan to roll back the regulations, which prevented internet service providers like AT&T and Verizon from slowing down certain content or requiring websites to pay for faster speeds.

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Lawmakers in these states say the bills have been inspired by frustration at an FCC that they feel has ignored the public, which overwhelmingly supports net neutrality.

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Despite the groundswell of support for net neutrality in state legislatures, though, the legislation still faces obstacles.

Pai’s order rolling back net neutrality includes language that specifically preempts any attempts that states could make to create their own net neutrality regulations.

"A state can only regulate communication within its state," said Roslyn Layton, a visiting scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute think tank.

  The Hill

So...sites can already be slowed down if the servers pushing them are in states without net neutrality? I'm not sure how this works.

“The FCC’s attempt to preempt state rules appears questionable,” said Pantelis Michalopoulos, a telecommunications lawyer at the firm Steptoe and Johnson.

Michalopoulos noted that while the legality of the situation is not completely clear yet, federal agencies generally have to offer some type of regulation to preempt state regulation. In this case, there are almost no rules, because the FCC got rid of them.

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Some state lawmakers are trying to dodge legal disputes completely by introducing “side door” legislation that doesn’t regulate tech firms directly, but would prevent telecommunications companies who violate net neutrality principles from getting contracts in the state.

The best I'm getting from this is that net neutrality isn't dead yet.

What's obvious is that the Trump administration is going to hand everything to corporations, no matter what the public wants. That's not new, it's just really, really obvious.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.