The FCC Lost, not Net Neutrality

Over at ReadWrite, Dan Rowinski has a nice piece pointing out just how limited Verizon's victory was. DemandProgress and others have been spamming me with "NET NEUTRALITY DEAD!" and other alarmist emails, but in reality that's not what the court decided.

As I mentioned earlier this week, what the Court ruled on was not net neutrality itself, but on the power of the FCC to issue such regulations. Rowinski elaborates, pointing out that Verizon raised both First and Fifth Amendment issues and didn't win on those grounds. In fact, the CAFC appears to have agreed that the FCC does have authority to issue regulations much like what net neutrality proponents want, but only for utilities.

The obvious answer is for the FCC to suck it up and reclassify, dealing with the political firestorm that will ensue. That doesn't guarantee that the CAFC (or some other Court) will necessarily agree that the specific regulations are still constitutional in the case of a utility, but it seems like we'd all be much better off.

ETA: Over at Boingboing, Cory Doctorow rounds up several other more realistic takes on the Court's ruling and focuses on the fact that the FCC's rules-as-written "sucked". This decision presents an opportunity to write better rules, assuming one is going to put up with even more howls of protest from industry.