Law Professors Support FCC in Comcast, BitTorrent Case

Five law professors have filed an amicus (friend of the court) brief in Comcast's challenge of the Federal Communications Commission's decision in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. They called the FCC's decision a "modest step" that simply supports decades for policy promoting an open and accessible net. By contrast, they argued, reversing the FCC's decision -- using unreasonable network management techniques was not giving customers sufficient notice about how it was managing its network -- "would reduce the Internet's ability to serve as an open platform for innovation, economic growth, and democratic discourse."

The filers are:

1) Jack M. Balkin is the Knight Professor of Constitutional Law and the First Amendment at Yale Law School.

2) James Ming ("Jim") Chen is Dean of the Louis D. Brandeis School of Law at the University of Louisville.

3) Lawrence Lessig is a Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, and is the director of the Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics at Harvard University.

4) Barbara van Schewick is Assistant Professor of Law at Stanford Law School and Assistant Professor (by courtesy) of Electrical Engineering at Stanford University.

5) Timothy Wu is a Professor of Law at Columbia University Law School.