Oral Arguments Set For Comcast Appeal

D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals will hear arguments on BitTorrent-Comcast case Jan. 8.

By John Eggerton -- Broadcasting & Cable, 10/28/2009 12:05:17 PM

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit has set Jan. 8 as the date for oral argument in Comcast's appeal of the FCC's network management decision in the BitTorrent case.

The FCC found back in summer 2008 that Comcast violated its Internet open-access guidelines by blocking BitTorrent peer-to-peer traffic.

Comcast took the FCC to court over the decision , challenging the legal underpinning of that decision, as well as the findings that Comcast was in violation, which it said "were not justified by the record."

In its latest filing to the court, Comcast also said the FCC's just-released network neutrality proposal provides more fodder for its argument that the FCC's guidelines were unenforceable.

NBC Universal is an intervenor in the case, likely on the issue of network management as it relates to piracy. Intervenor briefs are due Monday, Nov. 2, according to Comcast.

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Not only was the Comcast Order "not justified by the record;" it wasn't authorized by Federal law. The law does not empower the FCC to regulate the Internet -- which is one of the reasons why it has grown and prospered over the past 26 years. In order to claim that it had authority in the Comcast case, the FCC had to split a sentence in half and ignore the second half, which said that the Internet should be "free of state or Federal regulation."

Sadly, the FCC is now rushing to make rules that are even worse than the original ones -- exempting big political contributors such as Google from regulation while attempting to grant itself arbitrary ("case by case") power over ISPs. And given that the oral arguments in the Comcast appeal won't happen until January, and the FCC is rushing to have new rules enacted no later than March, there are likely to be more needless court battles as the FCC seeks to enforce its new rules before the court has delineated the extent of its jurisdiction.

And all so that a malevolent monopolist can get the most from its lobbying and campaign dollars. It's sad. Especially when the proposed regulation would be so harmful to consumers.

Brett Glass - 10/28/2009 4:36:22 PM EDT

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