WASHINGTON DC – The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on Tuesday struck down rules adopted by the Federal Communications Commission in 2010 meant to protect the openness of the Internet.
What does this ruling — and the principles of Net neutrality that it affects — mean to the average Internet user? While the legal arguments may seem complicated and arcane, the reality is that this court decision has the potential to alter the future of the Internet as we know it. Whether you think these changes will harm consumers or benefit them depends on whom you choose to believe in this ongoing debate.
To help readers get a better understanding of what the court’s Net neutrality decision means and to get a handle on what the potential outcomes might be, CNET has put together this FAQ.
What are the Open Internet rules?
Adopted by the FCC in late 2010, the Open Internet regulations are supposed to provide a set of rules to ensure that broadband service providers preserve open access to the Internet.
There are three main rules at the heart of the regulation. The first required that broadband providers, whether they’re fixed-line providers or wireless operators, are open and transparent to their customers and to the services using their networks about how they manage congestion on the systems.
The second rule prohibited broadband operators from blocking lawful content on their networks. Here, there’s some difference in strictness depending on whether the provider deals in fixed-broadband or wireless services. Fixed-broadband providers, such as cable operators and DSL providers, have abided by a more stringent set of rules, and wireless operators adhered to a less strict version of the rules.
And the third rule, which applied only to fixed-broadband providers, prohibited “unreasonable” discrimination against traffic on their networks.
What happened on Tuesday?
In 2011 after the FCC’s rules were published and set into action, Verizon Communications challenged those rules in court, arguing that the FCC had no authority from Congress to impose such rules and that the rules stymied its First Amendment rights.
On Tuesday, the federal Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit ruled in a 2-1 decision that even though the FCC has the authority to regulate broadband access, it based these rules on a flawed legal argument. In other words, the FCC based its Net neutrality regulation on a law that does not apply to broadband providers.
Specifically, the court said that since the FCC has classified broadband providers differently than it has classified telecommunications providers, it cannot use statutes that pertain to telecommunications services as a basis for regulation on broadband services.
