(H/Ts – Ed Morrissey and Owen)
The DC Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Federal Communications Commission does not have the statutory authority to regulate an Internet Service Provider’s network management practices. That regulation is at the surface (do note I didn’t say heart) of “Net Neutrality”.
This is a good thing. Anybody who has tried to download multiple items at once knows what happens when there’s congestion. There are certain web applications, from VOIP phones, to IP-based television (present both on Time Warner in a limited form and on AT&T’s U-verse as its sole video delivery method), that need a certain amount of bandwidth to operate.
While the ruling pretty much deep-sixes the plan to use the FCC to regulate the Internet without any specific statutory authority from Congress, Americans for Prospoerity’s Phil Kerpen warns in his latest podcast that the plan is afoot to try to have the FCC declare the Internet as a “market failure” and reclassify it from a Title I information service to a Title II telecommunications service (i.e. Plain-Old-Telephone-Service), and regulate every aspect.
