The Frightening Stakes of this Halloween’s Net Neutrality Hearing

<

div class=”field field–name-body field–type-text-with-summary field–label-hidden”>

<

div class=”field__items”>

<

div class=”field__item even”>

The future of the open internet is in danger this October 31st, not from ghosts and goblins, but from the broadband companies that control internet access in most of the United States.  
 
These companies would love to use their oligopoly power to charge users and websites additional fees for “premium” internet access, which they can create by artificially throttling some connections and prioritizing others. Thanks to public pressure and a coalition of public interest groups, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has forbidden such paid prioritization and throttling, as well as outright blocking of websites. These net neutrality protections ensure that ISPs treat all data that travels over their networks fairly, without improper discrimination in favor of particular apps, sites or services. 

But the lure of making more money without investing in better service or infrastructure is hard for broadband services like Comcast and AT&T to resist. So the big telecom companies have challenged the FCC’s rules in court—and their case has now made its way to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. 

A similar challenge was soundly rejected by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2016. Unfortunately the FCC, led by a new Chair, repealed those hard-won rules in 2017—despite intense resistance from nonprofits, artists, tech companies large and small, libraries, and millions of regular internet users. A few years later, FCC membership changed again, and the new FCC restored net neutrality protections. As everyone expected, Team Telecom ran back to court, leading to this appeal. 

A few things have changed since 2017, however, and none of them good for Team Internet. For one thing, the case is being heard in the Sixth Circuit, which is not bound by the D.C. Circuit’s earlier reasoning, and which has already signaled its sympathy for Team Telecom in a preliminary ruling. 

And, of course, the makeup of the Supreme Court has changed dramatically. Justice Kavanaugh, in particular, dissented from the D.C. Circui

[…]
Content was cut in order to protect the source.Please visit the source for the rest of the article.