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

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."

Comments

Great News

[Fire_Wraith]

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.

Re:Great News

[rsborg]

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.

Innovation

[93 Escort Wagon]

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!

Re:Innovation

[Lendrick]

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.

Re:Innovation

[pak9rabid]

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

Re:Major Loss for Internet Freedom

[anegg]

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.