Net Neutrality Loses

As expected Verizon won, “the DC circuit, in which the appeals court struck down the FCC’s net neutrality rules because the the FCC had no mandate under the rules it used to issue that ruling.” TechDirt has a good look at how both sides – carriers and net neutrality.

In 2005, with the Brand-X case and the FCC, this ruling was written. “Given that the Commission has chosen to classify broadband providers in a manner that exempts them from treatment as common carriers, the Communications Act expressly prohibits the Commission from nonetheless regulating them as such. Because the Commission has failed to establish that the anti-discrimination and anti-blocking rules do not impose per se common carrier obligations, we vacate those portions of the Open Internet Order.” [ARS]

This prevents the FCC — and the Obama administration – from using this ruling to allow for all sorts of craziness on the Internet in terms of rulings and privacy. Maybe.

The FCC lost in 2010 against Comcast in the same court, as cited in the ruling.

I like in the ruling on page 5 when the court starts to define the Internet players: “Four major participants in the Internet marketplace are relevant to the issues before us: backbone networks, broadband providers, edge providers, and end users.” The players who will be impacted are “Edge providers are those who, like Amazon or Google, provide content, services, and applications over the Internet, while end users are those who
consume edge providers’ content, services, and applications.” Or as I like to call them, the whole reason any pays $50+ per month for broadband (and even more for mobile data service). Think about that: It used to be one dial-up ISP getting $20 per month; now it is usually 2 ISP’s getting $50 per month each!!! And they want more. WTH.

In case you missed it, AT&T has already chosen different ways to make money – either by snooping on your Gigabit service in Austin for a discount or sponsoring your data plan from advertisers. All of this to make a noisier walled world. We head back to the days of Prodigy and AOL.

The WSJ says it best: “By tossing out the “Open Internet” rules written by the Federal Communications Commission in 2010, Internet service providers are now free to experiment with new types of arrangements, such as charging content companies* like Google or Netflix higher fees to deliver Internet traffic faster, more seamlessly or in greater quantity, or degrading the quality of certain online content unless its creators are willing to pay.” We already pay for the last mile; the content companies not only peer with the ISP’s but buy transit from them. And why do you think we pay for the pipe? It’s ALL ABOUT THE CONTENT!!! (or *the edge as the court explains).

Many content providers – see newspapers for example or Hulu – are already facing hard economic times. How will their business model stand up to having to Pay extra for Delivery? How will Google’s or Netflix?

We’ll see what happens. It won’t be well for the consumer, you can be sure of that. Nothing that happens in DC ever benefits the taxpayer.

Tags: FCC, Internet, isp, lawsuit, net neutrality, politics
Related tags: broadband providers, content companies, services applications, content services, internet, providers