Folks, today's ruling should come as no surprise. Congress never gave the FCC the authority to impose Net neutrality regulations on the Internet. That means the FCC's regulations were illegal. The same court already slapped down the FCC once, in 2010, remember:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-20001825-38.html
Legislation granting regulatory authority to the FCC came up for a vote in Congress, and it came close to passage: it was reported favorably out of a Senate committee but was defeated in a House floor vote in 2006: http://news.cnet.com/2100-1028_3-6081882.html
Even if you adore the principle of Net neutrality, it's reasonable to demand that federal regulatory agencies stick to what Congress authorized them to do. Otherwise you have illegal regulations and bureaucratic turf-grabbing that will not treat the Internet well. Remember Hollywood's successful efforts to lobby the FCC to impose "broadcast flags" on computers by bureaucratic fiat? A federal appeals court correctly struck it down as exceeding the agency's legal authority, as I wrote here in 2005: http://news.cnet.com/2100-1030_3-5697719.html
If Net neutrality violations become an actual problem, there's no shortage of publicity-hungry politicians in Congress (hi, Ed Markey!) who will hold hearings and push legislation forward. Obama will happily sign it. Until then, other government debacles including NSA domestic surveillance and Obamacare should make us wary of federal agencies exceeding their legal authority -- especially after Congress considered and rejected a law that would have given it to them in the first place.
> If Net neutrality violations become an actual problem,
Net neutrality violations had become an actual problem (and source of case-by-case FCC issues) before the FCC set out its open internet principles, much less issued the Open Internet Order.
> there's no shortage of publicity-hungry politicians in Congress (hi, Ed Markey!) who will hold hearings and push legislation forward.
There's more money-hungry politicians that are in bed with the entrenched interests that oppose neutrality that will act to prevent any net neutrality action.
> Obama will happily sign it.
Which would be significant, if it would ever get through Congress. Which it won't, particularly the House.
There were some scattered and quickly resolved problems, and Comcast certainly acted foolishly (and arguably dishonestly) in the case of BitTorrent throttling. But there was no evidence of widespread problems, and the Comcast-BitTorrent issue was resolved six years ago without the FCC playing referee: http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9904689-7.html
The reality is that Net neutrality became politicized long ago. It was embraced by pro-regulation left-leaning groups, who were in part funded by Silicon Valley companies who seeking a competitive advantage through the political process. And yes, AT&T and Comcast and other providers played defense by funding advocacy groups on the other side. You may remember that I was the first to disclose some of this dodgy stuff, back in 2008:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10016960-38.html
Once that politicization happened, rational thought in DC ended and it became something that a certain subset of politicians said "WE MUST HAVE," no matter what the law actually allows, which is a dangerous precedent. So welcome to today's state of affairs. On HN, however, I'd hope that we can be a bit more rational about this.
PS: If you think that a bunch of Tea Party conservatives in the House are going to defend AT&T, Comcast, VZ, etc. if they start blocking web sites, etc., you're badly mistaken. Also remember antitrust laws still apply even if the FCC vanishes tomorrow.
Wouldn't the FCC clearly have this authority if they simply choose to reclassify the internet as a telecommunications service subject to common carrier rules instead of an information service? (A decision that they can apparently make unilaterally.)
> Wouldn't the FCC clearly have this authority if they simply choose to reclassify the internet as a common carrier service instead of an information service?
They'd have to reclassify broadband as a telecommunication service instead of an information service to regulate broadband providers as common carriers.
This would be reviewable by the courts under the definitions of those terms in the Telecommunications Act, but looking at the definitions, it seems that this would likely be reasonable. (Most ISP provide some components of service that are clearly more like an "information service" than a "telecommunication service", but the basic of internet access seem to be more like a "telecommunication service", and regulating different components of packaged services differently is something that the FCC has done other places before.)
Legislation granting regulatory authority to the FCC came up for a vote in Congress, and it came close to passage: it was reported favorably out of a Senate committee but was defeated in a House floor vote in 2006: http://news.cnet.com/2100-1028_3-6081882.html
Even if you adore the principle of Net neutrality, it's reasonable to demand that federal regulatory agencies stick to what Congress authorized them to do. Otherwise you have illegal regulations and bureaucratic turf-grabbing that will not treat the Internet well. Remember Hollywood's successful efforts to lobby the FCC to impose "broadcast flags" on computers by bureaucratic fiat? A federal appeals court correctly struck it down as exceeding the agency's legal authority, as I wrote here in 2005: http://news.cnet.com/2100-1030_3-5697719.html
If Net neutrality violations become an actual problem, there's no shortage of publicity-hungry politicians in Congress (hi, Ed Markey!) who will hold hearings and push legislation forward. Obama will happily sign it. Until then, other government debacles including NSA domestic surveillance and Obamacare should make us wary of federal agencies exceeding their legal authority -- especially after Congress considered and rejected a law that would have given it to them in the first place.