DRM News

Back in 2007, the FCC sanctioned Comcast over its policy of nearly constant bandwidth throttling in an effort to stop peer to peer bittorrent transfers. Today, the US Court of Appeals ruled that the FCC does not have the legal authority to regulate the network management practices of an ISP.

The FCC established an Internet Policy Statement in 2005 that included a freedom from traffic discrimination in the part of an ISP. That was what they used to lambast Comcast for their behaviour in 2007. Comcast took them to court, saying that the FCC had no Congressional authority to enforce the ‘freedoms’ laid out in the policy statement, as they were not a part of a legally binding document. There was no specific legal statute that was broken by Comcast’s actions.

Whether or not this might set a precedent allowing ISPs a little more freedom and wiggle room to institute policies in line with what they want (with no consideration for such notions as net neutrality) remains to be seen. The door has now been opened for any Internet provider to throttle traffic as they see fit.