FCC Incurs Net Loss in Battle for Net Neutrality

The FCC’s mission of promoting Internet neutrality suffered a significant setback yesterday when the D.C. Court of Appeals ruled in Comcast Corp. v. Federal Communication Commission  that the FCC lacked authority to prohibit Internet service providers from monitoring and restricting their subscribers’ use of certain peer-to-peer applications.

The controversy arose in 2007 after Comcast subscribers noticed that the company was impeding their use of BitTorrent, an open source, peer-to-peer networking protocol that has rapidly grown in popularity due to its speed and efficiency, but has notoriously been exploited for the unlawful exchange of copyrighted material.  Read more »