A federal appeals court has set aside Federal Communications Commission rules designed to ensure that transmission of all Internet content be treated equally.
The decision was a setback for the Obama administration’s goal of Internet openness.
The anti-discrimination and anti-blocking requirements bar broadband providers from prioritizing some types of Internet traffic over others.
A three-judge panel said that the FCC has the authority to regulate broadband providers’ treatment of Internet traffic. However, the judges concluded that the FCC failed to establish that its regulations don’t overreach.
FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said the commission will consider its options, including an appeal, to ensure that networks on which the Internet depends provide a free and open platform.
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(AP)
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3 Responses
You really should find a news source other than AP, which has become very left-oriented as of late. The issue is important since it would discourage investment in better internet service by prohibiting internet providers from recouping their investment. For example, heavy graphic intensive sites would get a free ride (in otherwords people streaming their favorite dubious movies couldn’t be charged extra, meaning they would in effect be subsidized by people sending email). The court decision is a victory for free markets over quasi-socialism, and one that benefits the frum community since we tend not to using the graphic-intensive sites.
This is a very sad ruling. This basically allows any ISP to decide what you can and can’t do. For instance Verizon can go to YWN and say pay $1,000.00 a month or your site will load very slow. Amazon can pay ATT so that all of their competitions sites will load very slow.
A third scenario is ISP’s blocking out their competition. I think it was Comcast that was caught red handed altering packets going to their competitors networks so clients would get fed up and purchase services fro them instead of their competition.
BuzBuz: At present, the ISPs charges users and/or content providers independent of what they use. That means it costs as much to access YWN as it does to access Netflix, but Netflix involves tremendously more bandwidth. That means we who use the internet primarily for textual and limited graphical communications are in effect forced to subsidize those who use the internet for high bandwidth activities such as streaming. The ISPs want to base fees on usage – just like we do for telephones, electricity, etc.