Lawyer: Verizon should be able to block websites

Verizon Communications should be able to block its broadband customers from going to websites that refuse to pay the provider to deliver their traffic, a lawyer for Verizon told an appeals court.

Current Federal Communications Commission (FCC) rules prohibiting broadband providers from selectively blocking or slowing Web traffic go beyond the agency's authority granted by the Congress in the Telecommunications Act of 1996, Verizon lawyer Helgi Walker told judges in the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Verizon is appealing FCC network neutrality rules passed in December 2010. Lawyers for the FCC and a coalition of groups that filed briefs supporting the rules faced a skeptical panel of judges. Judge David Tatel repeatedly asked lawyers for both sides if the court could uphold the FCC's antiblocking rule, preventing broadband providers from totally blocking their customers from going to some websites, while rejecting the agency's antidiscrimination rule, preventing broadband providers from giving some Web traffic preferential treatment. Sean Lev, general counsel at the FCC, rejected Verizon's claim that the network neutrality rules violate its First Amendment free speech rights. Verizon is free to publish its own websites, but it isn't acting as a speaker when carrying customers' traffic, he said. When Judge Tatel asked why Verizon, acting as a consumer broadband provider, should deliver service to websites for free, Lev said those websites pay their own broadband fees. The websites are "not requesting service from Verizon," he said.