Court Rules FCC Lacks Authority to Enforce Net Neutrality

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled earlier this week that the FCC overstepped its authority in 2008 when it took action against Comcast for blocking customers who were consuming large amounts of bandwidth.  The court rejected the FCC’s argument that it has regulatory powers over Internet service providers (ISPs) in the same way it regulates radio and TV. 

This decision has enormous ramifications with regard to the issue of net neutrality which would require ISPs to treat all Internet traffic equally.  Critics fear that without such regulations ISPs could block, charge or slow down the delivery of video and other content that competes with their own offerings. Google (which owns YouTube), Yahoo, Facebook and others argue that net neutrality is essential to the continued innovation supported by equal access to the Web. 

“The FCC is essentially unable now to protect consumers and implement the national broadband plan,” says S. Derek Turner, research director for the consumer advocacy group Free Press.  

Others, such as Randal Mitch, executive vice president and general counsel for Verizon, say these worries are overblown and that the bigger threat is government regulation of the fast-evolving Internet.  “This is not going to change anything a bit,” says Mitch.  Verizon, AT&T and Comcast are all ISPs who would be subjected to regulation if net neutrality were enforceable by the FCC. 

For more on both sides of this issue, see the story in the San Jose Merucry News