Posted on 04/06/2010 9:22:17 AM PDT by maddog55
The Federal Communications Commission does not have the legal authority to slap Net neutrality regulations on Internet providers, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday.
A three-judge panel in Washington, D.C. unanimously tossed out the FCC's August 2008 cease and desist order against Comcast, which had taken measures to slow BitTorrent transfers and had voluntarily ended them earlier that year.
Because the FCC "has failed to tie its assertion" of regulatory authority to any actual law enacted by Congress, the agency does not have the authority to regulate an Internet provider's network management practices, wrote Judge David Tatel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
Tuesday's decision could doom one of the signature initiatives of current FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, a Democrat. Last October, Genachowski announced plans to begin drafting a formal set of Net neutrality rules -- even though Congress has not given the agency permission to begin. (Verizon Communications CEO Ivan Seidenberg, for instance, has said that new regulations would stifle innovative technologies like telemedicine.)
Even though liberal advocacy groups had urged the FCC to take action against Comcast, the agency's vote to proceed was a narrow 3-2, with the dissenting commissioners predicting at the time that it would not hold up in court. FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell, a Republican, said at the time that the FCC's ruling was unlawful and the lack of legal authority "is sure to doom this order on appeal."
The ruling also is likely to shift the debate to whether Congress will choose to explicitly grant the FCC the authority to regulate companies' network management practices, and revive lobbying coalitions that have been defunct for the last few years.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.cnet.com ...
Net neutrality is simply the control of Free Speech. The only reason for Net neutrality is to control your free speech and track it.
Marxist rule in a republic makes for many court decisions. We’re witnessing a battle between our Marxist leaders and the upholders of our Constitution (Federal courts and SCOTUS). Notice a spike in court decisions resulting from Obama’s regime? Health care bill decisions coming soon..
:-D!
Waiting from you Freepers to chime in on this.
Hoping someone here can explain the trade-offs on this from a FR perspective.
I don’t want to try to sort this all out from a MSM news perspective. I just don’t have the time.
What is the bottom line on this?
Any parallels to the Tennessee Valley Authority mess from the 1930’s?
I live on the Internet now, so this is important to me.
Thanks
Jeff
well, from what I have read, net neutrality is what we have now.
without it, ISPs would be able to decide what websites they want to allow. Your web provider could block freerepublic, for example.
Bad news is that this ruling is based on existing communications law and not the Constitution (meaning it can be reversed with a bang of Queen Nancy’s gavel)
I see you've bought the line from the telecom companies and their many astroturf organizations. Net neutrality is keeping the Internet as it was, content neutral. It prevents a few possible abuses by the telecoms that would hurt everybody but them.
But I'm still happy with this. This would need a law, not arbitrary bureaucratic regulation.
This problem could have easily been handled with a disclosure requirement. Something like the statement below. Net Neutrality is little more than an attempt to assert control of the federal government over private property.
If you the service provider, filter or restrict bandwidth in any way, you must disclose that at the time of sale.
We really need more laws and regulation. Let the free market determine what is required and not required.
obama will soon issue an executive order bypassing this minor inconvenience
or maybe pelosi will whip up some new legislation and get it signed off by Barry in a week or so
Progressivism will not be denied
It means no one can tell you to drink Coke when you prefer Pepsi.
No one tell what you can put on your website and service providers can’t start favoring traffic to other sites or limiting traffic to your site or your favorite site such as Free Republic.
Hope the conservatives and fence sitters on the court stay healthy.
The market isn't exactly free. Many telcoms have actual and effective monopolies in their areas. Furthermore, this would basically destroy the Internet and establish artificial barriers to entry for new, innovative young companies.
You can look at many things like that. Gas companies, food companies, banks when buying property, computer companies, TV manufacturers, Telephone companies, etc, etc. With the internet, it’s my decision whether I want to use it or not and it’s my decision to say what I want.
Net neutrality in this context means that the ISP is not to favor or disfavor certain types of internet traffic. It has nothing to do with blocking particular hosts.
And that could be curtailed without net neutrality. Under it the ISPs must be neutral to your speech or the application with which you wish to make your speech.
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