Internet Groups, Consumers Union Support Legal Move to Overturn Net Neutrality Order
Major internet players asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit to overturn last year’s order repealing 2015 net neutrality rules. The Internet Association filed a brief joined by the Entertainment Software Association, Computer & Communications Industry Association…
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and Writers Guild of America West. The IA-led filing said the FCC was wrong that bright line rules aren’t needed. “The broadband marketplace cannot effectively discipline ISP gatekeepers because a lack of competition and high switching costs prevent even fully-informed consumers from responding to unwanted ISP practices,” they said. “General consumer protection laws provide no clear protection against non-neutral ISP practices so long as they are disclosed, and antitrust laws were neither intended nor designed to address the net neutrality harms at issue here.” The FCC didn’t correctly assess costs of overturning the rules and professed lack of jurisdiction, IA said. “The Commission entirely disclaims authority it possesses under this Court’s precedent, while exceeding its authority under the only source of authority the Order recognized -- the now-repealed Section 257(c) of the Communications Act." The 2015 order wasn’t unprecedented, Consumers Union said. “It implemented the same policy the FCC had been pursuing for more than four decades, using the tool that was available to it -- a tool that the Commission had used before, from 1998-2005.” What was unprecedented was last year’s repeal, CU said. “For the first time since the 1960s, the FCC abandoned the principles of openness, nondiscrimination, and competition central to net neutrality. The resulting 2018 Order’s revision of history ignored nearly a decade of wireline broadband classification under Title II.” USTelecom President Jonathan Spalter slammed the IA pleading. “It’s ironic" the companies that "have become the internet’s most powerful gatekeepers are claiming to fight for a free and open internet that exempts them from the very rules for which they are advocating,” he said. He sought "legislation that provides uniform consumer protections that apply to all companies in the internet ecosystem, and will truly preserve and protect net neutrality principles for all.” Professors and former FCC Chief Technologists Scott Jordan and Jon Peha said it's the agency that didn’t keep up with how technology has evolved. The order “relies on technical assumptions that are no longer valid,” they said. “Consumers today turn almost entirely to providers other than their ISP for e-mail service, web page hosting, discussion forums, and countless other content and application services.” When broadband customers use Gmail, “no email is ‘stored on an Internet service provider's computers’ … so it is Google that provides the information service,” they said.