Federal Court: FCC Does Not Have Right to Regulate Net Neutrality
Posted by Jim Hoft on Tuesday, April 6, 2010, 6:04 AM
A federal court ruled today that the FCC does not have thee right to regulate net neutrality. The decision is a blow to the FCC, which argued it had authority to police Internet providers and prevent them from blocking or slowing subscribers’ Internet traffic.
CNET News reported:
The Federal Communications Commission does not have the legal authority to slap Net neutrality regulations on Internet providers, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday.
A three-judge panel in Washington, D.C. unanimously tossed out the FCC’s August 2008 cease and desist order against Comcast, which had taken measures to slow BitTorrent transfers and had voluntarily ended them earlier that year.
Because the FCC “has failed to tie its assertion” of regulatory authority to any actual law enacted by Congress, the agency does not have the authority to regulate an Internet provider’s network management practices, wrote Judge David Tatel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
Tuesday’s decision could doom one of the signature initiatives of FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, a Democrat. Last October, Genachowski announced plans to begin drafting a formal set of Net neutrality rules–even though Congress has not given the agency permission to begin. (Verizon Communications CEO Ivan Seidenberg has said that new regulations would stifle innovative technologies like telemedicine.)
Even though liberal advocacy groups had urged the FCC to take action against Comcast, the agency’s vote to proceed was a narrow 3-2, with the dissenting commissioners predicting at the time that it would not hold up in court. FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell, a Republican, said at the time that the FCC’s ruling was unlawful and the lack of legal authority “is sure to doom this order on appeal.”
Net neutrality proponents responded on Tuesday by saying the FCC should slap landline-style regulations on Internet providers, which could involve price regulation, service quality controls, and technological mandates.
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Published May 24, 2012 at 8:46 pm - 82 Comments
bill-tb commented:
Aww man and those brand new just made up, EPA CO2 rules lack the Congressional stamp of approval as well. Shucks … There goes the AGW Hoax …
Mitch da Bitch commented:
Do you really think that this will stop them? Hardly…
bg commented:
++
“we the people” still have a Congress!?
sure as there’s a faux health care bill fooled me..
==
MGB commented:
We’ll take any victory, no matter how small. This is great news, especially an unanimous decision in DC.
Valerie commented:
What, we still have a judicial branch? And it still insists on due process? Well, today is not so bad, after all.
TaSS commented:
One for us.
wanumba commented:
DRUDGE’s headline on this certainly isn’t going to go over well at the White House and FCC.
Ha!
Brian H commented:
Pet peeve: the headline displays a major error. I, as a citizen have rights. Some of those rights are in the Constitution. Those rights are my shield against government. The government has powers. Those powers are supposed to be used for the benefit of all. The exception is when those powers infringe on my rights and become an unreasonable use of power.
Also, the courts didn’t say that the 1st amendment protects us against net neutrality, it said that the government was not relying on a law, but instead just telling people what to do. At best this is a half win.
Peggy commented:
The DC Circuit has been pounding the FCC on its over-reach in various areas for over 10 years now. I have recommended on the Toyota fine post that Toyota appeal the DoT fine to this court.
waicool commented:
i don’t get the whole net neutrality thing. Net neutral, it seems like an oxymoron. I suppose if the judges ruled AGAINST the FCC, then I would think that is a good thing since the FCC is the government and they screw everything up they touch.
Melvin Winter commented:
Related parody: Obama Convention Delegates to Administer “Net Neutrality” Rules http://optoons.blogspot.com/2009/10/obama-convention-delegates-to.html
Militant Conservative commented:
waicool
April 6th, 2010 | 1:15 pm | #10
If you can go to Rush Limbaughs web site for a good and short explanation. You are correct though, what ever government touches turns to excrement.
pjean commented:
Don’t take your eyes off of this story.
oldguy commented:
Could this ruling be applied to the EPA and their regulation of CO2?
Sandy from Chesterfield commented:
You are so right #13. Don’t take your eyes off of this story. The FCC says they will just REGULATE IT just like the EPA says they will do also. Who can overrule a regulation and where do they get this authority??
waicool commented:
Thanks Militant Conservative
From Rush Limbaugh’s Website (I hope this copyclip is ok)
” The easiest way to understand this is to think of a Fairness Doctrine for the Internet. Now, how would this work? Let’s say that you want to go Google or Bing, you want to search the mating habits of the Australian rabbit bat. Net neutrality would require that every search engine produce an equal number of results that satisfy every disagreement about the issue. Yep. And that’s going to happen. That pretty much is going to happen. And the White House is in bed with Google. The White House and Google are bedmates, Google, largest search engine. Already, if you do a search of me on Google and you look at the crap that comes up, it’s by design and on purpose. It’s literal crap, I mean the most obscure places you never knew existed with comments about what happened on this program every day. It took a long time, but we had to really work hard at getting our website to pop up in a search of Google, our own website.
So in the era of net neutrality — and this is where the Google-White House partnership comes into play — the results of any search, let’s say you want to search abortion, or you want to search the health care bill, they want to control what you see. They want to control what your options are. They can’t really control the content, it’s too massive and it’s too big. What they want to try to do is limit your access to it and have that access flavored toward whatever particular point of view the administration wants supported. Now, that is coming. That’s why they want all this new broadband. That’s why they want all this new speed. That’s why they want all this new access. It’s not to own it; it’s to control the content as best they can. Just think of it as Fairness Doctrine for the Internet. I’m not making this up. I guarantee you that’s what’s coming. I think this is a fait accompli. I think it practically has been voted on, done deal. ”
wow, kinda glad I asked, I still think the moniker “net-neutrality” makes it sound like an agreeable thing. not so for freedom loving Americans.