The Internet Association, a trade group that counts Airbnb, Google, Amazon, Facebook, and other giants as members, said Friday that it will join in legal action aimed at restoring net neutrality regulations. The announcement came after the Federal Communications Commission on Thursday released the final version of its repeal decision, the Restoring Internet Freedom Order, which was approved on December 14.
The order opens the door for internet service providers to throttle, block, or charge more for certain content. Major internet retailers, content providers, and social media companies fear ISPs could start charging them for faster connections, which would also present a roadblock to smaller startups. Supporters of the rollback say it encourages greater investment in internet infrastructure and, perhaps more importantly, aligns with free-market ideology.
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The Internet Association said it will “act as an intervener in a judicial action against this order.” An intervener, while not a direct litigant, is granted certain rights by a court to comment or act in a case.
Since the FCC vote to repeal net neutrality rules in December, opponents of the decision have been preparing to fight it in the courts. New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has said he will sue to block the decision, in part on the basis of millions of apparently fraudulent public comments submitted prior to the vote. Legal challenges may also argue that the decision oversteps the FCC’s procedural authority to change rules, though courts have in the past given the agency broad leeway.
Etsy has also said they will take direct legal action. The filing of a suit or suits against the FCC decision is still ongoing, and Gizmodo has a thorough rundown of the intricacies of the filing process and likely arguments.
DescretoBurrito on January 8th, 2018 at 17:25 UTC »
The court case is the most important part right. More important than the FCC vote was. Executive agencies are barred from making "arbitrary and capricious" rule changes, meant to keep regulations from changing every time the party in control of the White House changes. Title II classification and net neutrality protections were enacted in 2015. It will be the FCC's burden to prove in court that either the market has changed enough since then to warrant a change, or that the regulations have measurably hurt the marketplace since the 2015 rules were enacted.
After passing the 2015 regulations classifying wireline internet service as a Title II utility, the FCC was sued by ISP groups. In court the FCC successfully defended this action as the industry had changed substantially since it's previous regulations had been enacted seeing the rise of services such as VOIP and streaming video. The FCC won again at the appellate level. The chances of the net neutrality rollback holding up in court is almost nil. The FCC and ISP's know this. After the courts strike down Pai's repeal, congress will step in to settle the "controversy", strip the FCC of the power to regulate ISP's, and write their own regulations. Everyone should be against congressional action because any bill would be written by ISP lobbyists, and any change to the regulations would require further congressional action.
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20170502/17212137292/dont-get-fooled-plan-is-to-kill-net-neutrality-while-pretending-being-protected.shtml
https://www.wired.com/2017/04/fccs-plans-gut-net-neutrality-just-might-fail/?utm_content=bufferaa2b2&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
CatOnProzac on January 8th, 2018 at 17:10 UTC »
About time. Now we need Blizzard, Valve and EA to step up and get in the game with Netflix. No one is going to buy a game/expansion if they have to download 30 gigs at dialup speeds. Let alone patch their OS because of a data cap, or get new video card drivers.
If your company does any service over the internet they you stand to lose money and customers. Money due to extortion and customers due to high prices.
factbased on January 8th, 2018 at 13:29 UTC »
Everyone, to some extent, has a stake in an open Internet and should be challenging the coup by large ISPs and their government lackeys.
Edit: the member list looks like a handy list of companies for Comcast et al to throttle while asking for protection money. Standing together, as opposed to being picked off one by one, is a good strategy.