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Comment by UncleEntity | Hacker News Reader

Haven't read TFA but I'm going to say the internet most definitely falls under 'interstate commerce' so California isn't able to regulate it.

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California is most definitely within its rights to regulate businesses operating within the state. If an ISP wants to sell its service to CA residents, it can abide by CA laws.

Even if that's true, that's not even half the problem. Especially because of the public outcry, I wouldn't be surprised if ISPs even lower consumer prices to try and drive the point home of "told you so". Then, on the other side, they get to play mafia with internet-based businesses.

Can you elaborate on how this would fall under interstate commerce? As I see it, they'd be regulating how they treat in-state customers and their connections, not anything coming across the state-lines. i.e. They aren't saying Comcast isn't allowed to do things to a line for a customer in Utah.

Sure, if the server and customer are both in Ca but if the server is elsewhere and they do their traffic shaping outside of state lines there isn't much that can be done.

I never paid much attention to what they got up to before the feds stepped in but I kind of doubt it was a last mile problem, once the packet got that far why mess with it?

But, knowing California, they'll do one of those "...and any packet destined for a customer in California."

Routing happens dynamically, but it very probably doesn't touch an ISP's pipes until very close to the "last mile" — especially when you're talking about the smaller ISPs who don't even have an inter-state presence.

> Sure, if the server and customer are both in Ca but if the server is elsewhere and they do their traffic shaping outside of state lines there isn't much that can be done.

Ignoring the around the world latency and assuming CA has a trans-pacific pipe to asia they could route all CA traffic out of country first. Would this disregard the "interstate" premise?

(talking hypothetical here)

The same way Gun-Free School Zones fall under the Commerce Clause, but with less of a stretch of the imagination.

> Can you elaborate on how this would fall under interstate commerce?

The Commerce Clause has been ruled to apply to something you grow in your own backyard and consume yourself because of a theoretical impact on the national market: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wickard_v._Filburn So it's very easy to see how regulating state internet regulations also falls into the purview of the federal government from there.

Definitely an interesting subject, but I would think with how heavily regulated cable and phone lines are, that California could enforce it on ISPs for their residents, at least.

Interstate commerce for some, but not for others.

The modern 'conservative' stance towards the affairs of the day.

You're exactly right and I have no idea why you've been downvoted.

Meh, people like to downvote instead of coming up with a rational counter-argument. In another thread I got downvoted multiple times for merely stating a fact.

I just see it as opportunity to hone my subtle trolling skills.

Saying it's one thing, doesn't make it so, which is why fiat statements of fact that arent fact, get downvoted. Sales tax on ecommerce has demonstrated that there are decisions that are both yet-to-be-determined and will resolve in fantastically complicated idiotic ways.

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