Re:F.C.C. Asks AT&T for Details on Plans to Halt Fiber Expan...
by dragonwriter on Friday November 14, 2014 @06:03PM
(#8610057)
> why do we need net neutrality right now? It seems to be pre-emptive legislation. (The ISPs might do something bad, so we need to prevent it.)
It is not a pre-emptive response to a speculative future threat, but a response to actions that have already occurred. The Open Internet principles underlying the FCC's recent regulatory efforts in that domain were first articulated as principles that would be policy objectives to preserve (but that did not, at that time, need specific direct regulatory enforcement) several years before any direct regulation was attempted. The direct regulation came after several issues in which those principles were violated by ISPs, and in which the FCC had attempted to rein those in based on its ancillary authority rather than specific directed regulation, but failed [1].
The 2010 Open Internet Report and Order -- the first "net neutrality" regulation from the FCC -- was a response to both the violations of the Open Internet principles already occurring and the court decisions preventing the FCC from administratively enforcing those without specific regulation.
It is not a pre-emptive response to a speculative future threat, but a response to actions that have already occurred. The Open Internet principles underlying the FCC's recent regulatory efforts in that domain were first articulated as principles that would be policy objectives to preserve (but that did not, at that time, need specific direct regulatory enforcement) several years before any direct regulation was attempted. The direct regulation came after several issues in which those principles were violated by ISPs, and in which the FCC had attempted to rein those in based on its ancillary authority rather than specific directed regulation, but failed [1].
The 2010 Open Internet Report and Order -- the first "net neutrality" regulation from the FCC -- was a response to both the violations of the Open Internet principles already occurring and the court decisions preventing the FCC from administratively enforcing those without specific regulation.
[1] Most notably, in Comcast v. FCC, 600 F.3d 642 (2010), see, e.g., http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comcast_Corp._v._FCC