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US Appeals Court Won't Rehear 'Net Neutrality' Challenge (reuters.com)
A federal appeals court on Monday declined to rehear a challenge to the Obama administration's landmark "net neutrality" rules requiring internet providers to guarantee equal access to all websites. From a report: The decision by the full appeals court in Washington not to reconsider a three-judge panel's decision that upheld the ruling comes days after Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai proposed to undo the 2015 net neutrality that reclassified internet providers like public utilities. The 2015 order bars internet providers from blocking, throttling or giving "fast lanes" to some websites. Pai has proposed reversing the reclassification and scrapping internet conduct standards, and has asked for comment on whether the FCC can or should retain any of the rules barring blocking, throttling or "fast lanes." Judge Sri Srinivasan said in a written opinion reviewing the decision "would be particularly unwarranted at this point in light of the uncertainty surrounding the fate of the FCC's order."
One could reasonably make the case that TCP/IP was not designed to elevate one customer's packets over another. Application layer protocols (video + voice over web and email) certainly, but even then, the original intent was to set those priorities for each user's own network.
When consumers purchase "Internet access" (for home use or a commercial server farm), they expect to have equal access to all of it, subject to the traditional limitations of how much bandwidth the other side has purchased, how many hops it takes to efficiently route the traffic, and any weak spots along the way. Deliberately degrading certain destinations (the "slow lane") and still calling the service "Internet" is IMHO selling an adulterated product, just as a product labelled "ground beef" is expected to be made from beef instead of soy.
Hmmm...I'm not sure fans of net neutrality won anything here. I think the court basically said, "who cares about the legal challenge to Obama's rule, since Obama's rule is dead man walking anyway." From TFA:
>> Judge Sri Srinivasan said in a written opinion reviewing the decision "would be particularly unwarranted at this point in light of the uncertainty surrounding the fate of the FCC’s order." The FCC is set to hold an initial vote on May 18 on Pai's proposal but Srinivasan questioned why the full court should review "the validity of a rule that the agency had already slated for replacement."