Could Court's Campaign Finance Ruling Affect Network Neutrality?

The Supreme Court ruling that throws out limits on corporate political-endorsement spending is giving new hope to opponents of network neutrality regulation proposed by the Federal Communication Commission.

In Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the Supreme Court on Thursday reaffirmed earlier rulings granting corporations free-speech rights, by saying a limit on spending for endorsements for candidates violates those rights. While Citizens United has nothing to do with net neutrality rules, opponents of the FCC's proposal say the court appeared to strengthen corporate free-speech rights in a way that could apply to net neutrality.

Net neutrality backers, however, say that people looking to the Citizens United case for direction on net neutrality are stretching the definitions of free speech and exaggerating the role of broadband service providers. "It'd be kind of funny, if we didn't have to keep responding to some of these arguments," said Corie Wright, a lawyer for Free Press, a media reform group that supports net neutrality rules. She said those arguments confuse the role that ISPs have as Web site publishers with their role as network operators. She acknowledged that broadband providers have limited functions, such as publishing their own Web sites or blogs, that enjoy free-speech rights. But the net neutrality rules as proposed would create no limits on the ability of ISPs to publish their own Web sites, she said. The arguments that the ISPs' traffic-carrying role is speech is "so fundamentally at odds with the facts in the law," Wright said.