Court Tosses FCC's 'Net Neutrality' Rules

Decision Clears Way for New Fees on Web's Heavy Bandwidth Users





By Gautham Nagesh and
Brent Kendall, WSJ


Updated Jan. 14, 2014 7:52 p.m. ET






A federal court has tossed out the FCC's "open internet" rules, and now internet service providers are free to charge companies like Google and Netflix higher fees to deliver content faster.




WASHINGTONA U.S. appeals court on Tuesday threw out federal rules requiring broadband providers to treat all Internet traffic equally, raising the prospect that bandwidth-hungry websites like Netflix Inc. NFLX +0.34% might have to pay tolls to ensure quality service.
The ruling was a blow to the Obama administration, which has pushed the idea of "net neutrality." And it sharpened the struggle by the nation's big entertainment and telecommunications companies to shape the regulation of broadband, now a vital pipeline for tens of millions of Americans to view video and other media.
For consumers, the ruling could usher in an era of tiered Internet service, in which they get some content at full speed while other websites appear slower because their owners chose not to pay up.
"It takes the Internet into completely uncharted territory," said Tim Wu, a Columbia University law professor who coined the term net neutrality.



Adopted in 2010, the Federal Communications Commission rules said that companies like Verizon Communications Inc. VZ +0.11% and Comcast Corp. CMCSA +1.25% had to treat all similar content on their networks equally, whether it was a YouTube video or a home video posted on a personal website.
Deciding a lawsuit brought by Verizon, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit struck down the rules. The court said the FCC saddled broadband providers with the same sorts of obligations as traditional "common carrier" telecommunications services, such as landline phone systems, even though the commission had explicitly decided not to classify broadband as a telecom service.
"Given that the Commission has chosen to classify broadband providers in a manner that exempts them from treatment as common carriers, the Communications Act expressly prohibits the commission from nonetheless regulating them as such," Judge David Tatel wrote for the court.
Though the FCC said it might appeal, the ruling for now means Internet-service providers are free to experiment with new types of pricing arrangements, such as charging content companies like Google Inc. GOOG +2.35% or Netflix higher fees to deliver Internet traffic faster. Or, they could choose to degrade the quality of certain online content unless its creators were willing to pay up.



Netflix and Google declined to comment.
Tony Wible, an analyst at Janney Capital Markets, said Internet companies would mount a fight to avoid paying new fees, but he said it was inevitable that over time some of the burden of paying for Internet infrastructure to handle bulging traffic would shift to content providers or consumers in the form of usage-based billing.
"You need to put forth an economic model to finance that investment," he said. "The question is over the price point and who is going to set it."
The ruling also poses a dilemma for the FCC and President Barack Obama, who has pushed for equal treatment of Internet traffic going back to his first presidential campaign.
Supporters of net neutrality had urged Mr. Obama's first FCC chairman, Julius Genachowski, to reclassify broadband as a telecom service. But the commission balked in the face of strong Republican opposition, a decision that ultimately weakened its legal position.
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The current FCC chairman, Tom Wheeler, has said he is against regulating broadband Internet in the same manner of the landline phone system. Such regulation could expose broadband providers to a panoply of new federal rules on pricing and servicewhich critics say would lead to excessive control of the industry by Washington.
"In the Internet's infancy, the commission made the right decision to leave it free from the interference of government regulators. Today's ruling vacates the commission's attempt to go back on this policy and to smother the Internet with rules designed for the monopoly telephone network," House Energy and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton (R., Mich.) and Rep. Greg Walden (R., Ore.) said in a statement.
The ruling left some room for FCC action by finding the agency had the authority to police broadband use, albeit not through the method it used in 2010. Bolstered by that finding, Mr. Wheeler's FCC could choose to bring enforcement actions on a case-by-case basis against companies that act in an allegedly anticompetitive manner.
Mr. Wheeler suggested as much in a speech last week. He said "history instructs us that not all new proposals have been benign" and said the government retained the ability to intervene if companies were abusing their market power.
On Tuesday, he issued a statement saying he was "committed to maintaining our networks as engines for economic growth, test beds for innovative services and products, and channels for all forms of speech protected by the First Amendment."
The FCC also could weigh in on the issue when it considers cable-industry mergers, by imposing conditions on big players. Speculation that a wave of cable mergers is in the offing has been fueled in recent months by Charter Communications Inc. CHTR +2.32% 's pursuit of Time Warner Cable Inc. TWC +2.72%
Silicon Valley companies criticized the ruling and called on Washington to respond. Telecom companies "are now in a position to not only make considerable sums of money but, in many ways, they are one of the most important arbiters of culture and speech and what is or isn't going to be on the Internet," said Eric Klinker, chief executive of BitTorrent Inc., a website that allows people to swap digital movies.
If Tuesday's ruling stands, it could throw a wrench into the business models of Netflix, Google and others, potentially raising prices for consumers.
Netflix accounts for 32% of peak Internet traffic in North America, the most of any content provider, according to Sandvine, a broadband-services company. That has made Netflix a target for some cable-industry executives, who have argued the company should be subsidizing the costs of delivering its service to consumers.
In an interview last summer, Charter Communications Chief Executive Tom Rutledge noted that all broadband capacity was "paid for by the consumer," but "you could argue that it would be more efficient for consumers if the people who are taking the bandwidth for a product were paying for the bandwidth in some fair and proportional way."
A Charter spokesman declined to comment on the ruling.
Netflix's business model assumes it will need to make large investments to acquire the rights to TV shows and movies that it offers and also factors in some costs related to moving data efficiently on the Internet's backbone. But a new fee charged by Internet providers, if it were sizable, could dent the company's profit or force it to raise prices for consumers.
The spotlight also is on Google, whose YouTube site accounts for 19% of peak Web traffic, and other major streaming-video sites.
Both are part of the Internet Association, a coalition of Web companies that supports the approach taken by the FCC. The association's president, Michael Beckerman, said Tuesday that the group supported an open Internet free from "discriminatory, anticompetitive actions by gatekeepers."
Verizon and other Internet-service providers said the ruling would have little impact on the way consumers experience the Internet. "Verizon has been and remains committed to the open Internet which provides consumers with competitive choices and unblocked access to lawful websites and content when, where, and how they want," said Verizon Executive Vice President Randal Milch.
Comcast had agreed to abide by the FCC's open Internet rules for seven years as part of a deal to win regulatory approval for its purchase of a controlling stake in media company NBCUniversal from General Electric Co. GE +0.90%
"We remain comfortable with that commitment because we have notand will notblock our customers' ability to access lawful Internet content, applications or services," said Comcast Executive Vice President David L. Cohen in a statement.
Ryan Knutson contributed to this article.
Write to Gautham Nagesh at gautham.nagesh@wsj.com and Brent Kendall at brent.kendall@wsj.com

A federal appeals court today just sided with Verizon and against you, against us, against the Internet.
[URL="http://salsa.wiredforchange.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=fJGiclQVY0d5LLeian2EWyu2TpK0uUq3"]
Click here to stop this ruling now![/URL]

If this ruling stands, the Internet as we know it will die. Forget free and open access. Picture a system like cable television with corporations charging for different levels of access, and blocking access to information they don't favor!

The Internet is our tool for circumventing the corporate media, for reaching each other with a bit of truth and accuracy, for organizing each other into collective action. We cannot let this one go.

Sign this petition to the FCC, Congress, and the White House now!

And use the Internet in every way you know to share this far and wide.

Please forward this email to everyone!

-- The RootsAction.org team

Federal court strikes down FCC net neutrality rules

By Adi Robertson on January 14, 2014 10:27 am

A federal appeals court has struck down important segments of the FCC's Open Internet rules, determining that the agency doesn't have the power to require internet service providers to treat all traffic equally. The DC circuit court has ruled on Verizon v. FCC, a challenge to the net neutrality rules put in place in 2010, vacating the FCC's anti-discrimination and anti-blocking policies, though it preserved disclosure requirements that Verizon opposed in other words, carriers can make some traffic run faster or block other services, but they have to tell subscribers.
The problem isn't that the court opposed the FCC's goals, it's that unlike older telecommunications providers, ISPs aren't classified as "common carriers" that must pass information through their networks without preference. By enforcing net neutrality, the court found, the agency was imposing rules that didn't apply to carriers. It's an issue that net neutrality supporters have been worried about for years: "The FCC under the leadership of former Chairman Julius Genachowski made a grave mistake when it failed to ground its Open Internet rules on solid legal footing," says Free Press president Craig Aaron. "Internet users will pay dearly for the previous chairman's lack of political will."
"WE WILL CONSIDER ALL AVAILABLE OPTIONS, INCLUDING THOSE FOR APPEAL."
Despite striking down parts of the rules, Judge David Tatel said that the FCC should have some authority to regulate service providers. The FCC justified its rules partly by saying that the Open Internet order promotes broadband development, an explicit agency goal. While opponents of net neutrality have said that there's little evidence these rules actually help, Tatel disagreed, saying that the idea was "both rational and supported by substantial evidence." Verizon also argued that Congress was responsible for passing regulations, but "although regulation of broadband Internet providers certainly involves decisions of great 'economic and political significance' ... we have little reason given this history to think that Congress could not have delegated some of these decisions to the Commission."
Notably, Tatel also agreed that striking down net neutrality could have negative effects on consumers. "The commission has adequately supported and explained its conclusion that absent rules such as those set forth in the Open Internet Order, broadband providers represent a threat to internet openness and could act in ways that would ultimately inhibit the speed and extent of future broadband deployment," he said, saying that broadband companies have "powerful incentives" to charge for prioritized access or to exclude services that competed with their own offerings.
WITHOUT NET NEUTRALITY, "BROADBAND PROVIDERS REPRESENT A THREAT TO INTERNET OPENNESS."
Unfortunately for the commission, the particular rules it tried to make anti-blocking and anti-discrimination measures were expressly allowed only for common carriers. Despite the FCC's arguments, Tatel didn't think that the Open Internet rules were more permissive than common carrier standards, nor did he think that internet service providers could be counted as something besides carriers, an argument that could have opened the door to more regulations.
FCC chair Tom Wheeler said that the agency would continue the fight, though it's not clear exactly how. "I am committed to maintaining our networks as engines for economic growth, test beds for innovative services and products, and channels for all forms of speech protected by the First Amendment. We will consider all available options, including those for appeal, to ensure that these networks on which the Internet depends continue to provide a free and open platform for innovation and expression, and operate in the interest of all Americans."

Internet Freedom and Copyright Reform: Aaron Swartz's Suspicious Death

By Stephen Lendman
Global Research, January 15, 2013

Region: USA
Theme: Media Disinformation

The Wall Street Journal headlined "An Internet Activist Commits Suicide."
New York's medical examiner announced death by "hang(ing) himself in his Brooklyn apartment."
Lingering suspicions remain. Why would someone with so much to give end it all this way? He was one of the Internet generation's best and brightest.
He advocated online freedom. Selflessly he sought a better open world. Information should be freely available, he believed. A legion of followers supported him globally.
Alive he symbolized a vital struggle to pursue. Death may elevate him to martyr status but removes a key figure important to keep alive.
The New York Times headlined "Internet Activist, a Creator of RSS, Is Dead at 26, Apparently a Suicide."
He was an Internet folk hero. He supported online freedom and copyright reform. He advocated free and open web files. He championed a vital cause. He worked tirelessly for what's right.
Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle called him "steadfast in his dedication to building a better and open world. He is among the best spirits of the Internet generation."
Who'll replace him now that he's gone? He called locking up the public domain sinful. He selflessly strove to prevent it.
In July 2011, he was arrested. At the time, he was downloading old scholarly articles. He was charged with violating federal hacking laws. MIT gave him a guest account to do it.
He developed RSS and co-founded Reddit. It's a social news site.
He was found dead weeks before he was scheduled to stand trial. He was targeted for doing the right thing. He didn't steal or profit. He shared. His activism was more than words.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) defends online freedom, free speech, privacy, innovation, and consumer rights. It "champion(s) the public interest in every critical battle affecting digital rights."
On January 12, it headlined "Farewell to Aaron Swartz, an extraordinary hacker and activist." It called him "a close friend and collaborator." Tragedy ended his life.
Vital questions remain unanswered. Supporters demand answers. So do family members.They blame prosecutors for what happened. Their statement following his death said the following:

"Aaron's death is not simply a personal tragedy. It is the product of a criminal justice system rife with intimidation and prosecutorial overreach. Decisions made by officials in the Massachusetts US Attorney's office and at MIT contributed to his death."

Swartz did as much or more than anyone to make the Internet a thriving open knowledge ecosystem. He strove to keep it that way. He challenged repressive Internet laws.
He founded Demand Progress. It "works to win progressive policy changes for ordinary people through organizing and grassroots lobbying," he said.
It prioritizes "civil liberties, civil rights, and government reform." It ran online campaigns for justice. It advocated in the public interest. It challenged policies harming it.
He mobilized over a million online activists. His other projects included RSS specification, web.py, tor2web, the Open Library, and the Chrome port of HTTPS Everywhere.
He launched Creative Commons. He co-founded Reddit. He and others made it successful. His Raw Thought blog discussed "politics and parody." He had much to say worth hearing.
In 2011, he used the MIT campus network. He downloaded millions of journal articles. He used the JSTOR database. Authorities claimed he changed his laptop's IP and Mac addresses. They said he did it to circumvent JSTOR/MIT blocks.
He was charged with "unauthorized (computer) access" under the Computer and Abuse Act. He did the equivalent of checking out too many library books at the same time.
Obama prosecutors claim doing so is criminal. They've waged war on Internet freedom. They want Net Neutrality and free expression abolished. They want fascist laws replacing them.
They usurped diktat power. They spurn rule of law principles and other democratic values. They enforce police state authority. They prioritize what no civil society should tolerate.
They claimed Aaron intended to distribute material on peer-to-peer networks. He never did. It hardly mattered. Documents he secured were returned. No harm. No foul. Federal authorities charged him anyway.
In July 2011, a Massachusetts grand jury indicted him. He was arraigned in Boston US District Court. He pled not guilty to all charges. He was freed on a $100,000 unsecured bond.
If convicted, he faced up to 35 years imprisonment and a $1 million dollar fine. He wanted scientific/scholarly articles liberated. They belong in the public domain. He wanted everyone given access. It's their right, he believed.
He wanted a single giant dataset established. He did it before. He wasn't charged. Why now?
"While his methods were provocative," said EFF, his goal was "freeing the publicly-funded scientific literature from a publishing system that makes it inaccessible to most of those who paid for it."
EFF calls it a cause everyone should support. Aaron was politically active. He fought for what's right. Followers supported him globally.
In the "physical world," at worst he'd have faced minor charges, said EFF. They're "akin to trespassing as part of political protests."
Doing it online changed things. He faced possible long-term incarceration. For years, EFF fought this type injustice.
Academic/political activist Lawrence Lessig called Aaron's death just cause for reforming computer crime laws. Overzealous prosecutors are bullies. They overreach and cause harm.
EFF mourned his passing, saying:
"Aaron, we will sorely miss your friendship, and your help in building a better world." Many others feel the same way.
Did Aaron take his own life or was he killed? Moti Nissani is Wayne State University Department of Biology Professor Emeritus. "Who Killed Aaron Swartz," he asked?
He quoted Bob Marley saying:
"How long shall they kill our prophets while we stand aside and look?" He listed reasons why Obama administration scoundrels wanted him dead.
His death "was preceded by a vicious, totally unjustified, campaign of surveillance, harassment, vilification, and intimidation."
Powerful government and business figures deplored him. In 2009, FBI elements investigated him. Charges didn't follow.
Despite extreme pressure, he pressed on. He defied prosecutorial authority. In October 2009, he posted his FBI file online. Doing do "probably signed his own lynch warrant," said Nissani.
Two days before his death, JSTOR, his alleged victim, declined to press charges. It went further. It "announced that the archives of more than 1,200 of its journals would be available to the public free."
Aaron had just cause to celebrate. "Are we to believe" he hanged himself instead?
"He was young and admired by many." Did "invisible government" elements kill him?
"They did so either indirectly through constant harassment….
"All this raises a dilemma for those of us possessing both conscience and a functioning brain." How much longer will we stand by and do nothing?
How long will we tolerate what demands condemnation? When will we defend our own interests?
Freedom is too precious to lose.
Aaron's Guerrilla Open Access Manifesto
His own words say it best.

"Information is power," he said. "But like all power, there are those who want to keep it for themselves."
"The world's entire scientific and cultural heritage, published over centuries in books and journals, is increasingly being digitized and locked up by a handful of private corporations."
"Want to read the papers featuring the most famous results of the sciences? You'll need to send enormous amounts to publishers like Reed Elsevier."
"There are those struggling to change this. The Open Access Movement has fought valiantly to ensure that scientists do not sign their copyrights away but instead ensure their work is published on the Internet, under terms that allow anyone to access it."
"But even under the best scenarios, their work will only apply to things published in the future. Everything up until now will have been lost."
"That is too high a price to pay. Forcing academics to pay money to read the work of their colleagues? Scanning entire libraries but only allowing the folks at Google to read them?"
"Providing scientific articles to those at elite universities in the First World, but not to children in the Global South? It's outrageous and unacceptable."
" I agree,' many say, but what can we do?' The companies hold the copyrights. They make enormous amounts of money by charging for access, and it's perfectly legal there's nothing we can do to stop them. But there is something we can, something that's already being done: we can fight back."

"Those with access to these resources students, librarians, scientists you have been given a privilege. You get to feed at this banquet of knowledge while the rest of the world is locked out."

"But you need not indeed, morally, you cannot keep this privilege for yourselves. You have a duty to share it with the world. And you have: trading passwords with colleagues, filling download requests for friends."
"Meanwhile, those who have been locked out are not standing idly by. You have been sneaking through holes and climbing over fences, liberating the information locked up by the publishers and sharing them with your friends."
"But all of this action goes on in the dark, hidden underground. It's called stealing or piracy, as if sharing a wealth of knowledge were the moral equivalent of plundering a ship and murdering its crew. But sharing isn't immoral it's a moral imperative. Only those blinded by greed would refuse to let a friend make a copy."
"Large corporations, of course, are blinded by greed. The laws under which they operate require it their shareholders would revolt at anything less. And the politicians they have bought off back them, passing laws giving them the exclusive power to decide who can make copies."
"There is no justice in following unjust laws. It's time to come into the light and, in the grand tradition of civil disobedience, declare our opposition to this private theft of public culture."
"We need to take information, wherever it is stored, make our copies and share them with the world. We need to take stuff that's out of copyright and add it to the archive."
"We need to buy secret databases and put them on the Web. We need to download scientific journals and upload them to file sharing networks. We need to fight for Guerrilla Open Access."
"With enough of us, around the world, we'll not just send a strong message opposing the privatization of knowledge we'll make it a thing of the past. Will you join us?"

Does Aaron's manifesto sound like someone planning suicide?

Netherlands passes net neutrality law, first among EU nations

By Vlad Savov on May 9, 2012 08:18 am

People in the Netherlands have reason to celebrate today, following the expected passing into law of new net neutrality regulation. The legislation in question was agreed upon back in June last year, but it's only on Tuesday that the nation's second legislative chamber gave its blessing to the move, making everything official. Under the new law, mobile internet providers like KPN won't be able to charge for access to particular services like Skype or throttle traffic through them both techniques that the company was intent on using to manage its mobile traffic.
Some exceptional reasons, such as network congestion and security, are allowed for slowing down users' connections, but the general thrust of the law is that operators ought to be blind to the traffic they carry and treat all of it equally. Dutch lobbying group Bits of Freedom also notes that the net neutrality law includes anti-wiretapping provisions, making it unlawful to use deep packet inspection on users' internet communications without their express consent or a legal warrant. All in all, it's a good day for privacy and internet freedom in the Netherlands, now how about we spread the good cheer throughout the whole European Union?

Well this will greatly affect those who watch movies online. Like streaming Netflix. The provider bill will be drastic. And more importantly the wonderful political videos online, that educate the Sheeple
-those who are willing to take the time- . I pay for netflix both DVDs and streaming and our cable bill is already high. Is greed the motive here?
I think it's far more sinister.

Dawn

Dawn Meredith Wrote:Well this will greatly affect those who watch movies online. Like streaming Netflix. The provider bill will be drastic. And more importantly the wonderful political videos online, that educate the Sheeple
-those who are willing to take the time- . I pay for netflix both DVDs and streaming and our cable bill is already high. Is greed the motive here?
I think it's far more sinister.

Dawn

Make the serfs pay and "educate" them at the same time. Usually it is two or more strands that come together to form a policy like this, making it irresistible to all the involved parties.

But not the people. They don't count.

David Guyatt Wrote:

Dawn Meredith Wrote:Well this will greatly affect those who watch movies online. Like streaming Netflix. The provider bill will be drastic. And more importantly the wonderful political videos online, that educate the Sheeple
-those who are willing to take the time- . I pay for netflix both DVDs and streaming and our cable bill is already high. Is greed the motive here?
I think it's far more sinister.

Dawn

Make the serfs pay and "educate" them at the same time. Usually it is two or more strands that come together to form a policy like this, making it irresistible to all the involved parties.

But not the people. They don't count.

Ya, just useless eaters ::

Anyone who doesn't see the connection between Google shutting down You-Tube and the seizure of the internet by the big boys is either cognitively impaired or part of the conspiracy.

Albert Doyle Wrote:Anyone who doesn't see the connection between Google shutting down You-Tube and the seizure of the internet by the big boys is either cognitively impaired or part of the conspiracy.

Here, here...::