April Glaser, Slate; The Last Hope for Net Neutrality
A federal appeals court upheld the FCC’s repeal of the open-internet rules. But it allowed for states to save them.
"It’s confirmed: Net neutrality is legally dead. On Tuesday
morning, a federal appeals court reaffirmed the Federal Communications
Commission’s repeal of Obama-era net neutrality rules that prohibited
internet providers from blocking, slowing down, or speeding up access to
websites. In a 200-page decision, the judges on the U.S. Court of
Appeals for the D.C. Circuit agreed with FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, who in
2017 vowed to “fire up a weed whacker” and destroy the regulations,
which had only been on the books for about two years at the time.
While it’s been legal for internet providers to block access to websites since June 2018,
when the FCC’s net neutrality repeal hit the books, advocates and
website owners who depend on unfettered consumer access to the web were
hopeful that the court would invalidate the repeal. Now, internet
providers like Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T can do whatever they want
with their customers’ connections and web access as long as they state
that they reserve the right to do so in their terms of service. That
doesn’t mean the internet is going to change tomorrow, or that Comcast
will start throttling with abandon anytime soon. But by allowing telecom
companies to sell faster speeds to the websites that can afford it, the
deregulation threatens the ideal of the open web—a level playing field
that allows anyone to build a website that can reach anyone.
There is a significant silver lining in Tuesday’s ruling, however: The
court struck down the part of the FCC’s 2017 rules that attempted to
preempt state net neutrality rules. That reaffirms legislation and
executive orders across the country that seek to preserve the pre-2017
status quo in which companies could not mess with websites’ and
customers’ access to the internet. Nine states—Hawaii, Montana, New
York, New Jersey, Washington, Rhode Island, California, Montana, and
Vermont—have passed their own net neutrality rules. Another 27 states
have seen legislation proposed to protect net neutrality. More than 100 mayors of cities across the country likewise have pledged not to sign contracts with internet providers that violate net-neutrality principles."
