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More than five hours today in an audience room in Washington, DC, a coalition of internet neutral advocates and the Federal Communications Commission clashed, with both parties arguing for and against Internet regulation.
Litigation is one of the most publicized legal battles in the history of the Internet, but there was no immediate indication as to how the panel of three judges overseeing the case would decide. In turn, the judges of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia have raised serious questions to both parties.
The applicants argued that the repeal of the FCC was unlawful in several respects. The FCC has not badyzed the Internet service market, nor has it taken public security into account, should not have prevented states from enforcing their own network neutrality rules, and made a mistake in determining what a service is. telecommunications, they said.
Some of those shots seemed to land, while others fell flat. The FCC has changed the legal clbadification of broadband service when it has repealed the rules, and this decision is a key point of contention. But it was difficult to see if the judges were influenced by the argument. The badogies used to explain the different types of Internet services became more and more complex: did the FCC treat the Internet as a pizza, when it was more like a pizza delivery service? a petitioner's lawyer asked. And was the modern Internet service more like Uber Eats?
The public safety argument, however, seemed to become an important point of the audience. The FCC was questioned fiercely by one of the judges, who repeatedly asked how his decision could affect first responders. Santa Clara County, which appeared in court to defend the rules of net neutrality, noted that the repeal may not be enough to solve a crisis. (Last year, the county made headlines about an incident caused by a strangulation during a California wildfire.)
The court noted that if someone is strangled during a crisis, the fact that someone is punished much later does not matter. "The post-hoc corrective measures do not work in the context of public safety and, unless I'm mistaken, they are not addressed anywhere in the order," the judge said.
During the hearing, the FCC mainly stated that the rules of neutrality of the Internet were damaging to broadband investments and that repeal was improving the market – an badysis that the petitioners strongly reject. A lawyer representing Internet service providers also claimed that there was not enough evidence of strangulation and blockage to demonstrate that the rules of internet neutrality were necessary. Agency officials have repeatedly stated that its transparency requirements are an effective means of protecting consumers.
The court can be tied to the case for a long time. Nevertheless, even if its participants used the language of a very technical legal dispute, the face-to-face was one of the most dramatic moments of the battle for internet neutrality.
"Today, we fought for an open and free Internet that puts consumers first," Denelle Dixon, chief operating officer at Mozilla, said in a statement. "Mozilla has taken up this challenge because we believe the FCC must follow the rules, like everyone else." The FCC, said the statement, had decided to "give up its responsibility to protect consumers on a whim."
"The US Supreme Court has already confirmed the FCC's power to clbadify broadband as an information service," said Matthew Berry, chief of staff of the FCC, in a statement. "to return to this regulatory framework in which the Internet flourished before 2015 and continues to flourish today."
FCC commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel, who voted against the decision to repeal the net neutrality rules, said in a tweet that there was "no shortage of complex issues in the pleadings", but that "the court now has a chance to repair what the FCC has committed" with its decision. "I sat through all this," she wrote. "I am full of hope."
Updated, 4 pm ET: Includes a statement from the FCC.
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