Briefs filed with a federal appeals court dispute the validity of...
Briefs filed with a federal appeals court dispute the validity of the FCC’s censure against Comcast for its handling of peer-to-peer Internet traffic. A brief from the company says the FCC’s Comcast-BitTorrent order “violates elementary tenets of administrative law…
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… circumvents the rulemaking requirements of the [Administrative Procedure Act]; contravenes fundamental principles of due process by applying binding legal norms to Comcast’s past conduct without fair notice; and fails to justify the exercise of ancillary authority. The Progress & Freedom Foundation echoed Comcast’s criticisms in a friend-of-the-court brief filed along with law professors James Speta and Glen Robinson. “The FCC seems to have ignored the foundation of the [Communications] Act and its past actions, that the non- regulation of Internet services is based upon the market’s dynamic, non-monopoly characteristics,” the foundation said. The FCC doesn’t have legal authority to regulate the Internet, and the broad discretionary oversight that the commission tried to give itself in the order violates the Communications Act, it said. “The Act does not grant to the FCC general authority over the Internet, despite the Commission’s claims in this case.”