In April 2010, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit has decided that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) does not have the authority to impose net neutrality regulations on Internet providers. The decision was made in the context of a court case against Comcast for throttling certain internet applications. Net neutrality is supported by Vinton Cerf of Google and others and opposed by carriers like Comcast and Verizon. The FCC in its role as regulator of interstate communications did have other options, for example, imposing common carrier-style regulation. The FCC decided to classify Internet access as an “information service” rather than a “telecommunications service,” a classification that allows for more regulatory intervention and includes traditional telephone companies.
A central achievement of former FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski was to put together a set of regulations that required Internet providers to treat all traffic the same. Now the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals while affirming the FCC’s power to regulate the Internet, has overturned the regulations that keep Internet providers from blocking or slowing down access to certain websites. The court said the FCC has authority over Internet providers, but exceeded its jurisdiction by regulating Internet providers as heavily as it regulates telephone companies. In practice this means thet Comcast, Verizon and others can throttle certain Internet applications such as BitTorrent or charge sites like Google, Facebook and Netflix for different speeds.
In response to the rulling the new chairman of the FCC has said
...the Court of Appeals has ruled on the Open Internet (Net Neutrality) Order upholding the Commission’s authority to act under Section 706. The FCC is not going to abandon its responsibility to oversee that broadband networks operate in the public interest. It is not going to ignore the historic reality that when a new network transitions to become an economic force that economic incentives begin to affect the public interest. This means that we will not disregard the possibility that exercises of economic power or of ideological preference by dominant network firms will diminish the value of the Internet to some or all segments of our society.
At the present time, the FCC has not elucidated specifically what it intends to do.
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