As we reported last February, a group of so-called consumer advocates and labor interests was urging Comcast to drop the litigation it brought challenging the FCC's use and enforcement of agency-made "guidelines." These guidelines determined how a company should manage its own networks and enforced them as if they were appropriately promulgated rules.
Comcast was only trying to ensure that peer-to-peer applications would not consume so much bandwidth that other applications, such as emergency phone calls, would be slowed down or interrupted. This week, the DC Circuit Court concluded that the FCC lacked jurisdictional authority when it fined Comcast for managing its network.
Now that they have lost in court, the same group seems intent on pushing for more government control of the Internet no matter how they have to do it.
This attempt to dismantle and discourage innovation has played itself out, as it should, in the courts, and it has been soundly defeated. But that is clearly not enough for some, and they are turning to interviews and panicked fundraising appeals to declare that such reasonable policies cannot stand and that the government must be given the power to impose greater regulation over all communications, and certainly over Internet broadband.
Simply put they want the FCC to control the Internet by placing it under Title II (see What's In A Title ), which would erect government tariffs, rules, recordkeeping and reporting, under the belief that Washington can do a better job crafting an Internet experience than the marketplace.
Their efforts to subvert the legitimate policymaking process and jam through legislation would only result in jeopardizing the future of broadband.
The extremist screeching should be put in its place and policymakers should now move forward and champion proven market solutions, which have and will continue to yield robust innovation, growth and investment. Those are the hallmarks of the wildly successful Internet boom for over a decade.
This question should now be settled, and we should now focus on continuing to expand the availability of broadband to as many American households as possible.
******
Today's TechByte was written by Bartlett D. Cleland, director of IPI Center for Technology Freedom.