Legal News

DC Circuit Takes Hit at Net Neutrality, Ninja

By Amir Efrati

Net neutrality.

It’s a notion that for years has been the subject of intense debate between Internet content providers like Google who favor it and telecom companies like Comcast who don’t. In short, the debate is about how much control telecoms should have over the Internet networks they built, and whether all Internet traffic should be treated equally by telecoms.

Yours truly first heard about the issue in 2006 from an Internet ninja (pictured) — a staunch proponent of net neutrality — whose video on net neutrality still makes us chuckle. We then wrote a primer about the issue.

It’s long been clear that some net neutrality battles would be waged in court. Today the DC Circuit Court of Appeals weighed in and handed the telecoms a victory against the Federal Communications Commission, which has supported net-neutrality principles.

The case before the DC circuit stemmed a citation issued by the FCC against Comcast in 2008 for interfering with or blocking its subscribers’ use of peer-to-peer networking applications. Those applications, such as BitTorrent, allow users to share large files directly with one another but consume significant amounts of bandwidth.

A unanimous three-judge DC Circuit panel ruled the FCC exceeded its authority when it issued the citation, ruling that Congress hadn’t given the FCC the power to regulate an Internet service provider’s network-management practices.

“The commission has failed to tie its assertion of ancillary authority over Comcast’s Internet service to any statutorily mandated responsibility,” the court said in a 36-page opinion.

The court’s decision could throw into question the FCC’s authority to impose open Internet rules, according to the early WSJ Story and the Hill.

The court’s move, according to the Hill, could be a major roadblock for the FCC, which drafted its comprehensive National Broadband Plan this year under the assumption that it possesses regulatory power over the Internet and the companies that provide users’ access to it.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on April 06, 2010 (boomark / email).