Internet Groups Urge US Court To Reinstate 'Net Neutrality' Rules (reuters.com)

A coalition of trade groups representing companies including Alphabet, Facebook Inc and Amazon.com, urged a U.S. appeals court to reinstate landmark "net neutrality" rules adopted in 2015 to guarantee an open internet. From a report: In a legal filing Monday, the Internet Association, Entertainment Software Association, Computer & Communications Industry Association, and Writers Guild of America West urged the reversal of the Trump administration decision to overturn the rules in December. "Rules regulating the conduct of (internet providers) continue to be needed to protect and promote an open internet," the groups wrote in a brief filed with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.

Comments

Really?

[zippo01]

If the rule was arbitrarily passed by a committee, (which at the time admitted may be overstepping bounds) what legal argument do you have when they undo it? its inconvenient? I understand it is a popular position, but this should be handled long term with legislation as several states have done.

Re:States

[sconeu]

As I understand it [disclaimer I am not a lawyer], most state NN laws basically state, "if you wish to be elgible for state contracts, you must do X, Y, and Z", where X, Y, and Z are NN principles.

They don't (and can't, per the Commerce Clause) enforce neutrality by fiat, they say, "if you want to do business WITH THIS STATE*, you must be network neutral." ${TELECOM} is free to not implement NN, but don't bother coming to contract with us. A State may set whatever criteria it wishes for the entities it contracts with.

* "With this state" as opposed to "within this state". Key distinction.

Re:Constitutional crisis

[EndlessNameless]

There is so much wrong in this post that it's difficult to address properly. But I will try.

net neutrality was a policy created by a government agency without the force of law

Congress has routinely delegated regulatory authority to the executive branch. The FAA, FCC, FTC, EPA, etc were all established by Congress. If Congress dislikes a regulation, they can pass a bill to fix it. The ultimate power always lies with Congress on these matters. Congress could, in theory, disband any of these agencies.

[the courts would be] enacting law from their own branch and circumventing the normal rules of how law gets enacted

Not at all. Congress gave authority to the FCC to regulate certain things. But the FCC still must regulate things in accordance with the law and established rule-making procedures. If Pai's reversal of net neutrality did not adhere to these rules, then it should be thrown out. The court is acting as a proper check on the executive branch by reviewing it for compliance with the law.

NN was *not* axed due to technical merits, it was axed because it wasn't proper law.

The original Open Internet rules were partially tossed because the court decided that the FCC could only regulate companies like that under Title II (and ISPs were classified under Title I at the time). This was Verizon v FCC 2014, and Verizon won.

The FCC responded by reviewing the ISP industry and reclassifying it under Title II. There was another legal challenge, and the court decided that the FCC has the authority to classify telecommunications services as it sees fit, and the FCC did so properly. This was Verizon v FCC 2016, and the FCC won.

So net neutrality was legal in the end. There is a specific "right way" to implement it under existing law, and Verizon basically forced the FCC to do it properly.