First Lawsuits Challenging FCC's New Net Neutrality Rules Arrive

An anonymous reader writes: A small ISP based in Texas and an industry trade group have become the first to file lawsuits challenging the FCC's recent net neutrality rules. The trade group, USTelecom, argues that the regulations are not "legally sustainable." Alamo Broadband claims it is facing "onerous requirements" by operating under Title II of the Communications Act. Such legal challenges were expected, and are doubtless the first of many — but few expected them to arrive so soon. While some of the new rules were considered "final" once the FCC released them on March 12, others don't go into effect until they're officially published in the Federal Register, which hasn't happened yet.

Comments

actually, NSFNET came after that

[YesIAmAScript]

And the government created that too. And the government decided eventually that confining the internet to just academia (as the NSFNET was) didn't make sense so they closed down the NSFNET and the main links changed to be commercial instead of government paid.

This period you speak of where the ARPANET was the backbone for a network that was generally used never existed. The NSFNET started out around 1987 and you didn't see any real commercial use of the internet until the early 90s. Even CIX (ANS) came in 1991 with the help of the NSF. After Congress (including Al Gore) passed legislation pushing the NSF to repeal its restrictions on commercial use you saw significant commercial uses take off.

Today's internet is in no way an unintended consequence. It may not have been paid for by the government, but they did design and develop it and were well aware of the possibilities beyond academia.

Re:May you choke on your own words

[PopeRatzo]

Giving the government credit for creating the current internet is like giving Abner Doubleday credit for Henry Aaron's home runs.

Now I'm confused. If baseball hadn't been invented, how would Hank Aaron have hit home runs again?

Maybe we need to work on your similes.