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Tom Wheeler Defeats the Broadband Industry: Net Neutrality Wins In Court (bloomberg.com)

Posted by msmash on from the big-win dept.

Andrew M Harris and Todd Shields, reporting for Bloomberg: The Federal Communications Commission won a major appeals court ruling supporting its efforts to prevent broadband Internet service providers from favoring some types of web traffic over others. The Washington-based court Tuesday denied challenges to the federal government's so-called net neutrality regulations, which were backed by President Barack Obama. The ruling hands a victory to those who champion the notion of an open internet where service providers are prevented from offering speedier lanes to content providers willing to pay for them. It's a defeat for challengers including AT&T Inc., Verizon Communications Inc. and Comcast Corp., which said the rule would discourage innovation and investment.FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said, "Today's ruling is a victory for consumers and innovators who deserve unfettered access to the entire web, and it ensures the Internet remains a platform for unparalleled innovation, free expression and economic growth. After a decade of debate and legal battles, today's ruling affirms the Commission's ability to enforce the strongest possible internet protections -- both on fixed and mobile networks -- that will ensure the internet remains open, now and in the future."

9 of 165 comments (clear)

  1. Great News by Fire_Wraith · · Score: 4, Interesting

    This effectively means it's settled. Comcast et al could still request an en banc hearing from the full Court of Appeals, but that's unlikely to succeed. They could appeal to the US Supreme Court, but with the current 4-4 split on the court, the best they could hope for is that the USSC would split and leave the Appeals Court ruling standing as is, at the same time they'd risk a 5-3 decision affirming net neutrality depending on how Kennedy swings.

    Of course, this could still be overturned if Trump wins and gets to override the pick for the next Justice, nevermind that a GOP congress plus Trump would be free to pass whatever anti-net neutrality legislation they want, or to replace the pro-neutrality majority of the FCC commissioners with a Republican one.

    1. Re:Great News by rsborg · · Score: 4, Interesting

      This effectively means it's settled. Comcast et al could still request an en banc hearing from the full Court of Appeals, but that's unlikely to succeed. They could appeal to the US Supreme Court, but with the current 4-4 split on the court, the best they could hope for is that the USSC would split and leave the Appeals Court ruling standing as is, at the same time they'd risk a 5-3 decision affirming net neutrality depending on how Kennedy swings.

      Of course, this could still be overturned if Trump wins and gets to override the pick for the next Justice, nevermind that a GOP congress plus Trump would be free to pass whatever anti-net neutrality legislation they want, or to replace the pro-neutrality majority of the FCC commissioners with a Republican one.

      It's really pretty staggering, considering that Democrats were supposed to be the "party of RIAA" back in the Clinton days (see Hollings, Senator from Disney). Sure, Lamar Alexander (R-Asshole) has been pretty good at picking up all of Hollings business once Hollings left Congress, but it's pretty interesting that the anti-free-internet banner has been picked up so thoroughly by the Republicans.

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    2. Re:Great News by Shakrai · · Score: 1, Interesting

      You want no regulation?

      I didn't say anything about what I wanted. :)

      I will say that it bothers me that the FCC has successfully claimed this authority for itself. It should bother anyone that truly cares about NN. There's no promise that tomorrow's FCC Commissioner will be pro-consumer. In fact, given the two Presidential candidates currently running, I'd say it's more likely than ever that we get another crony capitalist ex-telecom lobbyist as the next commissioner. Hillary Clinton is the definition of crony capitalist, she owes her personal fortune and political success to Wall Street. Donald Trump is an unknown, I doubt he's given the issue (or any issue for that matter) serious thought, but I'm not betting on him finding another Tom Wheeler. Besides, if he wins NN is the least of our worries.....

      Incidentally, NN was born after a few boneheaded remarks by AT&T's CEO, about charging Google and others for access to "his" pipes. It wasn't a response to actual abuse, rather, it was a response to the possibility of abuse. None of what the FCC is regulating against ever came to pass. Might it have, one day? Perhaps. But here in the real world we're seeing broadband costs increase many times faster than inflation, despite lower than ever CapEx, and there's nothing theoretical about caps and zero rating. They exist, in the real world, and they're doing real damage to the internet as we've always known it.

      --
      I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
      We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
  2. Subject of Comment by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I'm happier to see that this fellow has more integrity than most thought he'd have, with him being a former lobbyist for these cable companies.

  3. Innovation by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I'm trying hard to think no of anything even marginally resembling an innovation which has come from Comcast - but I'm drawing a blank. So I can't see that having it their own way up until now has resulted in what they claim will be stifled by these rules.

    On a side note: Tom Wheeler, I think many of us were wrong about you. Thank you!

    --
    #DeleteChrome
    1. Re:Innovation by Lendrick · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Furthermore, I can't imagine any "innovations" that are good for the consumer coming out of all this. All Comcast and Time Warner are doing is "innovating" ways to force people to spend more money even though they're already paying ten times what the service is actually worth.

      What we really need is a national law that outlaws local internet franchise agreements and prevents states and localities from outlawing municipal broadband. I'm lucky enough to live an in area with multiple ISPs, and (surprise surprise) nobody here has implemented data caps. I don't think capitalism is a perfect solution to all of our problems, but it does seem to work reasonably well for keeping internet prices under control.

    2. Re:Innovation by pak9rabid · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Don't forget terminating peoples' BitTorrent connections prematurely by injecting RST packets.

  4. Re:Major Loss for Internet Freedom by anegg · · Score: 4, Interesting
    One of the things I like about "the Internet" is that Internet Service Providers (the actual entities that were found to be Title II communications carriers) are most emphatically NOT the Internet. In the days of CompuServe, AOL, GENIE, et al., that confusion was understandable, because the only part of the service that wasn't run by the commercial provider was the actual analog telephone circuit used to carry the modulated data. Now, however, the major ISPs have steadily reduced most elements of service that used to be expected: no FTP services, no web site hosting except for very lame web site hosting, no USENET news feeds; the only thing most of them do except provide transit of IP packets from a subscriber's premise is provide e-mail hosting.

    The Internet is a grand bazaar, forum, and meeting place, and what is needed on the parts of the absolutely necessary firms that transport our communications traffic to/from the Internet is for them to most emphatically not muck with it, whether that mucking comes in the form of "super-cookies" (injections of information into what should be inviolate virtual connections), invading people's privacy by tracking what they are doing, or trying to enhance their profits by trying to charge both ends for the same traffic.

    There IS honor in providing an ordinary, plebeian transport service, albeit that honor may come with lower profit margins. Over the road truckers don't sort through our packages in order to build dossiers about what we buy, nor do they insert GPS trackers into packages in order to see where they are going. We wouldn't stand for them trying to monetize the delivery service they are already being paid to provide. We should expect no less from Internet Service Providers.

  5. Re:Traffic lanes designated to buses or bicycles n by anegg · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The only way I can think of addressing the problem of a lack of competition in the last mile of communications services is for local governments to provide the communications service as a basic utility, the same as water, sewer, trash pickup. Or maybe its provided by a utility provider like electricity or gas. Then companies like Comcast don't need to be a "monopoly" cable provider for a town or county; other companies like Verizon don't need to be a "monopoly" telephony provider either - anyone who wants to provide services (any data service, including telephony data and what we now thing of as cable television service data) can, with the services riding over the utility communications network. Perhaps that is what we are backing into, with ISPs being declared to be the utilities that they so obviously seem to be. Couple that with VoIP telephone services being broken free from cable companies and RBOCs, and the move to "cut the cord" with A/V entertainment services, and pretty soon there aren't any government-protected monopolies for phone and cable... just a basic communications utility provide by or on behalf of the local government, and a multitude of service providers, all competing openly with one another.