Ruling Against FCC Deals A Blow To Net Neutrality

The New York Times:

A federal appeals court on Tuesday dealt a sharp blow to the efforts of the Federal Communications Commission to set the rules of the road for the Internet, ruling that the agency lacks the authority to require broadband providers to give equal treatment to all Internet traffic flowing over their networks.

The decision, by the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, specifically concerned the efforts of Comcast, the nation’s largest cable provider, to slow down customers’ access to a service called BitTorrent, which is used to exchange large video files, most often pirated copies of movies.

The ruling would allow Comcast and other Internet service providers to restrict consumers’ ability to access certain kinds of Internet content, such as video sites like Hulu.com orGoogle’s YouTube service, or charge certain heavy users of their networks more money for access.

This is not a good thing.  We’ve seen in the recent financial crisis how insufficient regulation can allow huge firms to abuse their power to the detriment of their customers but often to the advantage of a small group of elites.  The situation with the Internet isn’t exactly analogous, but the same moral applies: regulation is essential to block monopolies from manipulating the flow of information on the Internet.  It’s almost a truism at this point, but in a democracy, free flow of and access to information – on anything – is essential, but this ruling allows large business interests to restrict this freedom of information as they see fit.  A federal appeals court is pretty high up in the judicial hierarchy, so this decision carries a lot of weight.  But it’s not final, and I hope to see a different decision reverse this trend and protect the rights of Internet users.

–Aaron Bekemeyer