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Internet Society New York Chapter 1:29 pm on 12/02/2010 Permalink Reply
Tags: fcc ( 86 ), Fordham ( 6 ), Susan Crawford ( 27 ), title 1   

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  joly 3:46 pm on 12/02/2010 Permalink | Reply

  Kevin Werbach addresses the reclassification question in a Dec 1 post on the FCC Open Internet blog – The Perfect, the Good, and the FCC.

  …. whatever the merits of the reclassification path, it’s not going to happen. There may have been a window of opportunity earlier this year, but it closed. A majority of the members of the House of Representatives signed on to a letter opposing the idea, and one could scarcely create a better issue to draw the united fire of grassroots Tea Party activists, the most powerful bipartisan corporate lobbying interests, and Republicans eager to take down the Obama Administration. I could imagine an FCC Chairman risking everything to push reclassification at any cost, but I can’t say I’d recommend that to Chairman Genachowski now. Especially when there’s an alternative that achieves the same objectives.

  Keep in mind that reclassification itself doesn’t make Net neutrality happen, even if the FCC order survives the court challenge. It gives the agency legal authority and a set of precedents, but applying those precedents to contemporary broadband practices will still be a painstaking process. Everyone knows the 1996 Telecommunications Act is outdated in this converged digital era. Anything the FCC does is a necessary stopgap until Congress replaces it, a process likely to take several years. The open Internet is the principle worth fighting for, not a particular legal theory.