Big case tomorrow on Net Neutrality tomorrow
Net neutrality battle gets a new day in court tomorrow
More than a year after net neutrality was essentially abolished by a divided Federal Communications Commission, a major legal challenge supported by dozens of companies and advocates has its day in court tomorrow. Mozilla v. FCC argues that the agency’s decision was not just dead wrong, but achieved illegally.
“We’re not just going into court to argue that the FCC made a policy mistake,” said Public Knowledge VP Chris Lewis in a statement. “It broke the law, too. The FCC simply failed in its responsibility to engage in reasoned decision-making.”
Oral arguments before the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals commence Friday, February 1, though the FCC attempted to have the date put off due to the shutdown — and the request was denied.
The legal challenge is one of several tacks being taken against the FCC’s replacement of 2015’s net neutrality rules with a much weaker one last year. As with any rule or law, there are multiple avenues for dissent; a direct legal challenge is among the quickest and most public.
Mozilla, along with Vimeo, Etsy, Public Knowledge, INCOMPAS, and a number of other companies and organizations, filed the challenge shortly after the new rules took effect, but these things take time to creep through the court system.
The lawsuit has a number of primary arguments against the rulemaking (you can read the full brief here), but they boil down to two basic ideas, which I’ve attempted to summarize below:
Article too long please click the link:
https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/31/net-neutrality-battle-gets-a-new-day-in-court-tomorrow/