Net Neutrality -- The Fight Ahead

After the Comcast-FCC decision, what does the future hold? The ruling sounds an echo of the Supreme Court's Citizens United v. FEC decision. That ruling in January amounted to a judicial giveaway of our democracy to powerful corporations. April 6's court decision effectively hands the future of communications over to corporations like AT&T, Comcast, Verizon and Time Warner Cable.

This is bad news on several fronts:

• Broadband Ambitions Sidelined: High-speed Internet access is a central component to our economic recovery. Putting high-speed Internet into the hands of the third of the country that now does not connect is Priority #1 of the FCC's National Broadband Plan. The court decision pulls the carpet from beneath the agency's plan, effectively leaving this essential job to companies that have failed -- by almost every international measure -- to deliver a fast and affordable services to Americans stuck on the wrong side of the digital divide.
• The End of Openness: The decision could mark the beginning of America's Broadband Dark Age. The court ruled that the FCC has no right to stop carriers from developing a two-tier Internet and blocking Web content that they don't like. They've already indicated their interest in prioritizing content they like at the expense of everybody else. As The Economist reported yesterday an ISP could simply "decide to hijack all search queries... and redirect them to its own search site so it could harvest the extra hits, even when users were attempting to use Google or other search engines." Nice!
• It's Now Their Internet, Not Yours: The decision could bring us a world where Internet users no longer have control over their Internet experience -- where we have no protections against ISPs that abuse our Internet rights at will and without repercussions. Increasingly AT&T, Comcast and Verizon have sought to encroach upon user choice online. Net Neutrality is essential to keeping the future of communications in the hands of all Americans -- and preventing ISPs from picking winners and losers on the Web. We've just lost that guarantee and it's only a matter of time before the Great Encroachment begins.
• But don't give up hope. There's a way out of this legal mess. The easiest route to restore an open Internet is for the FCC to simply vote to reclassify broadband under Title 2 of the Communications Act. This move would return to the agency the powers to protect consumers that it had before Bush-era deregulation struck it down.