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April 6, 2010
FCC Denied Power to Regulate Internet Neutrality (for now)
Posted by The MaryHunter at April 6, 2010 9:55 AM
A significant decision was just handed down from the courts supporting freedom of the Internet and thwarting liberal statists in the Obama Administration and their desire to control information flow and political discourse on the web.
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.
The case is a little obscure but it amounts to the FCC trying to tell Comcast and other Internet providers how they must manage their network, and the courts saying "sorry." The immediate result is a slap at Obama's designs on forcing "fairness" into the Internet, rather than just letting the market determine the message -- where liberal-progressive ideas perennially fail on talk radio and cable news.
Tuesday's decision could doom one of the signature initiatives of current 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, for instance, 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."
This story is far from over.
The ruling also is likely to shift the debate to whether Congress will choose to explicitly grant the FCC the authority to regulate companies' network management practices, and revive lobbying coalitions that have been defunct for the last few years.
Given the penchant for the Obama Administration and the Democrat-run Congress to ram freedom-restricting legislation up the collective rectum of America, you had best keep your hat on and your gas tank filled.
Hat tip: Drudge.
