The Sixth Circuit US Court of Appeals ruled yesterday that the FCC does not have the “statutory authority” to implement net neutrality rules.
Since the rules were established in 2015, the FCC argued that classifying ISPs as “telecommunication services” gives it broad authority to regulate them. The decision to redefine ISPs as “information services” during the first Trump Administration led to the repeal of net neutrality in 2017.
The current FCC voted to restore net neutrality on April 25 last year. The difference between 2015 and now is the Supreme Court’s recent, radical reinterpretation of an important legal doctrine. The Chevron doctrine said that if Congress doesn’t weigh in on an issue, courts are supposed to defer to the interpretation of government agencies. Now, interpretation falls to the individual judge, and the Sixth Court doesn’t agree with the FCC.
This is the end of the road for the FCC’s attempts to wrench a little bit of the power from internet providers and carriers and level speeds and access regardless of service. Net neutrality rules will remain in California and other states, but anything at the federal level will require either an act of Congress or, for this case, be appealed to (and succeed in front of) the Supreme Court.
– Mat Smith
Get this delivered daily direct to your inbox. Subscribe right here!
The biggest tech stories you missed
The information caused the stock price to slide.
Tesla delivered around 1.78 million vehicles in 2024, but the company delivered 1.81 million total in 2023. Company shares fell by as much as seven percent at the news, but has since rallied a couple of points. This follows similar news from Q1 of 2024, but that was just for a single quarter. Tesla doesn’t publish actual sales numbers in the US, but numbers are down in Europe, with a 14 percent decline in 2024 when compared to last year, according to the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association.
Continue reading.
Class members could get up to $20 per Siri-enabled device.
Apple will settle a five-year-old class action lawsuit over Siri privacy. Reuters reports that the company agreed to pay $95 million to class members, estimated to be tens of millions of Siri-enabled device owners. The lawsuit stemmed from a 2019 report that Apple quality control contractors could regularly hear sensitive info accidentally recorded by the voice assistant’s “Hey Siri” feature. The clips were said to include medical information, criminal activities and even “sexual encounters.” Reuters notes that $95 million in cash amounts to about nine hours of profit for the company. If you owned a Siri-enabled mobile product during that period (and Judge White approves the settlement), you might get a heady $20 per device.
Continue reading.
In 1972, Time named the computer ‘Man of the Year’
Well, machine of the year.
42 years ago, long before Time was awarding it to ‘you’, groups of scientists or even women (gasp!) it awarded the personal computer its ‘man of the year’ award. Time publisher John A. Meyers wrote: “Several human candidates might have represented 1982, but none symbolized the past year more richly, or will be viewed by history as more significant, than a machine: the computer.”
Credit: Source link
