Corporate efforts to overturn already weak Net Neutrality rules hit two obstacles yesterday. First, the corporate lawsuit seeking to overturn the recent FCC ruling on net neutrality was thrown out on procedural grounds. Specifically, the lawsuit was tossed because it was seeking to overturn a rule that has not yet gone into effect:
The FCC’s net neutrality rules got a breather Monday as Verizon and MetroPCS’s early challenges to the controversial limits on wireless service were thrown out by a federal appeals court on a technicality.(...)
Those suits were thrown out by the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., however, because the rules have not yet gone into effect. The net neutrality rules, adopted just before Christmas, don’t achieve the force of law until they are published in the Federal Register. The FCC has not said when that will happen, and the court agreed with the FCC that the rules can’t be contested legally until then.
Despite this legal setback, corporate forces are not seeking to overturn the FCC's Net Neutrality ruling by lawsuit alone. The Republican-controlled House of Representatives is shouldering the second prong of the telecom effort by preparing to pass a bill nullifying the FCC ruling. President Obama has responded to the expected passage of this bill by
threatening a veto:
The White House on Monday threatened to veto legislation from House Republicans that would repeal net-neutrality regulations.
In a statement of administration policy, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) said the president's advisers would recommend that he not sign a bill scrapping new Internet regulations from the Federal Communications Commission.
"If the President is presented with a Resolution of Disapproval that would not safeguard the free and open Internet, his senior advisers would recommend that he veto the Resolution," the statement said.
It's always nice to see veto threats against Republican-backed legislation, but don't expect the process to reach that stage. The Senate probably won't even bring up the House bill, much less pass it.
Taken together, these two developments all but guarantee there will be no further changes in federal Net Neutrality policy over the next two years. Additionally, they serve a didactic function by clearly defining the difference between federal Net Neutrality policy under Republican and Democratic governance. Basically, Democrats will provide weak Net Neutrality protection, while Republicans will provide none at all. As a public service to better define the stakes of the 2012 elections, it is important that we neither exaggerate nor minimize the differences between those two possible outcomes.