FCC Tells Court It Has No 'Legal Authority' To Impose Net Neutrality Rules (arstechnica.com)

The Federal Communications Commission opened its defense of its net neutrality repeal yesterday, telling a court that it has no authority to keep the net neutrality rules in place. From a report: Chairman Ajit Pai's FCC argued that broadband is not a "telecommunications service" as defined in federal law, and therefore it must be classified as an information service instead. As an information service, broadband cannot be subject to common carrier regulations such as net neutrality rules, Pai's FCC said. The FCC is only allowed to impose common carrier regulations on telecommunications services. "Given these classification decisions, the Commission determined that the Communications Act does not endow it with legal authority to retain the former conduct rules," the FCC said in a summary of its defense filed yesterday in the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The FCC is defending the net neutrality repeal against a lawsuit filed by more than 20 state attorneys general, consumer advocacy groups, and tech companies. The FCC's opponents in the case will file reply briefs next month, and oral arguments are scheduled for February.

Comments

Re:Definition in law

[presidenteloco]

"tele" - to or at a distance
"Communication" (from Latin commūnicāre, meaning "to share") is the act of conveying meanings from one entity or group to another through the use of mutually understood signs and semiotic rules.

Sounds an awful lot like a good definition of what the information communication infrastructure of the Internet does.

Internet information-communication service providers are CLEARLY telecommunications service providers under any non-crack-smoking interpretation of the common sense meaning of English language terms.