Corporate Control of Our Media... Take Two: Comcast, the FCC and the Future of the Internet

On Tuesday, a U.S. Appeals Court ruled that the Federal Communications Commission did not have the authority to order Comcast to stop blocking peer-to-peer sharing on the Internet in the name of network management. While the ruling seems small, it has big implications. The basic message is that the FCC cannot enforce Network Neutrality, which is the principle that our corporate Internet Service Providers cannot block content or treat different pieces of content differently. The concern is that without network neutrality in place, companies like Comcast and Verizon will decide what we see, hear and read on the Internet, in much the same way that Fox News (The New Corporation) and NBC (Viacom... soon to be Comcast) do with our TV.

While this decisions seems like a defeat, as folks at Save the Internet explain, there are ways around this ruling. For example, the FCC could reclassify broadband as a "Communications Service" as opposed to an "Entertainment Service". Read more about the ruling here, and sign a petition to ask the FCC to reclassify broadband as a communications service here. 

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