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Friday Groove: Bonnie Raitt on Austin City Limits: "Used to Rule the World"

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Obdicut (Now with 2% less brain)1/18/2014 9:51:11 am PST

Here’s from the DC courts ruling:

the Commission, we further hold, has reasonably interpreted section 706 to empower it to promulgate rules governing broadband providers treatment of Internet traffic

In other words: The FCC can enforce net neutrality.

Because the Commission has failed to establish that the anti-discrimination and anti-blocking rules do not impose per se common carrier obligations, we vacate those portions of the Open Internet Order.

However, since ISPs are not common carriers, that order isn’t valid.

At oral argument, however, Commission counsel asserted that ‘it’s not common carriage to simply have a basic level of required service if you can negotiate different levels with different people.’ … Viewed this way, the relevant “carriage” broadband providers furnish might be access to end users more generally, not the minimum required service. In delivering this service, so defined, the anti-blocking rules would permit broadband providers to distinguish somewhat among edge providers, just as Commission counsel contended at oral argument. … Whatever the merits of this view, the Commission advanced nothing like it either in the underlying Order or in its briefs before this court.

And the court says “This is a better argument, so use it next time and we’ll rule in favor of you.”

They even cite other cases (cell phones) where they already accepted this argument.

Edit: That original hyperbolic article notes this in one sentence:

The court did leave it up to the FCC or Congress to refashion a net neutrality regime.