Verizon neutrality claim ?at odds with common sense?

Four former FCC commissioners filed an amicus brief in support of the FCC recently backing the commission's federal suit versus Verizon.

Verizon has been claiming that the 2011 net neutrality rules infringe on its First Amendment rights. The commissioners - Reed Hundt, Michael Copps, Tyrone Brown and Nicholas Johnson, joined by others - have labeled Verizon's position as one that would dramatically restrict open communications.

According to one summary, the FCC's reasonable net neutrality rules do three things:

• Add transparency to how broadband providers - both wired and wireless - manage networks
• Prohibit wired broadband providers from blocking lawful content, applications, services, and non-harmful devices. Wireless providers are also barred from blocking lawful websites or applications that compete with voice or video services.
• Forbid wired broadband providers from discriminating in the transmission of lawful network traffic.

Verizon has cloaked its objections to the rules in constitutional language. However, the former commissioners aren't buying Verizon's claims and see it as a setting a dangerous precedent. "'Verizon's arguments fail as a matter of constitutional principle,' they argue. 'There is nothing inherently expressive about transmitting others' data packets, at a subscriber's direction, over the Internet'." In addition, the four said that Verizon’s claim their its free speech was infringed  upon is “at odds with common sense.”

And, this is no small matter. "Were Verizon's theories credited," they say, "Congress's historic power to take and authorize measures to preserve openness of communication networks would be unsettled and dramatically narrowed."

Verizon, backed by some libertarian groups as well as House Republicans, contend that the FCC has no power to regulate broadband.
 
Community, labor and civil rights groups have supported the FCC's open internet rules.  CWA has backed the FCC "initiative to sustain open Internet principles and create the stable conditions necessary for critical investment and quality job creation in broadband networks." And Speed Matters defended the rules in 2012, saying that Verizon's claim "will re-open a contentious debate and divert attention from the real challenges we face to bring our nation's high-speed infrastructure up to global standards."

The Hundt et al. brief also sees Verizon's suit as an unnecessary and unwarranted diversion and asks the court to "explicitly repudiate Verizon's effort to 'constitutionalize' matters, involving adjustment of complex, competing private and public interests, that have long and properly been understood to be for legislative and administrative resolution."

Former Commissioners Blast Verizon's Neutrality Stance (MediaPost, Jan. 17, 2013)
 
FCC Publishes Net Neutrality Rules (PC World, Sep. 23, 2011)
 
FCC Chairman's Initiative on Open Internet Will Jumpstart Broadband Buildout (CWA news release, Dec. 1, 2010
 
Court rules to hear Net neutrality Challenge (Speed Matters, Mar. 9, 2012)