Justin's Political Corner

Verizon cites its First Amendment right to free speech as grounds against the FCC net neutrality rules, but it may like the alternative to net neutrality even less.

Verizon originally filed suit against the FCC in early 2011. However, that case was thrown out of court because the FCC had not yet officially defined the rules and the court ruled that Verizon couldn’t sue the FCC over rules that didn’t technically exist yet.

In that case, Verizon simply asserted that the FCC was exceeding the bounds of its authority. However, according to the FCC site, “The FCC was established by the Communications Act of 1934 and is charged with regulating interstate and international communications by radio, television, wire, satellite and cable. The FCC’s jurisdiction covers the 50 states, the District of Columbia, and U.S. possessions.” That sweeping charter appears to grant the FCC the exact authority Verizon claims it doesn’t have.

This time around, Verizon is playing the First Amendment card. The challenge, essentially, is that by limiting Verizon’s ability to choose which content to block or promote, the FCC is infringing on Verizon’s right to free speech.

There are a couple major flaws in the argument. First, an individual’s right to free speech shouldn’t apply equally to a corporation. I’m not a Constitutional scholar nor a legal expert, but it seems to me that a corporation can say what it chooses as a function of the fact that the people actually saying it have an individual right to free speech. However, the corporation as an entity doesn’t necessarily enjoy that same right, and—in fact—the corporation’s right to free speech is already limited by rules governing false advertising or mandates to include specific text or warnings on products.

Second, the FCC net neutrality rules don’t actually inhibit an ISP’s ability to express itself freely. Under the FCC rules, Verizon is free to publish whatever content it chooses—it simply can’t block or discriminate against other content as a matter of business practice.

The fact of the matter is the vast majority of the data traversing the ISP’s network (like Verizon) doesn’t belong to the ISP in the first place. An argument could be made that by throttling or blocking traffic Verizon is actually the party guilty of stepping on the First Amendment rights of others.

Let’s assume for a minute, though, that Verizon has a First Amendment right to free speech, and that the court agrees this right is somehow violated by the FCC net neutrality rules. There is another approach to the problem that might make net neutrality the lesser of two evils by comparison.

What do you think? Does the Verizon First Amendment claim have merit? Should Verizon and other ISPs be allowed to throttle or block certain network traffic? Or, do you think the FCC net neutrality rules are valid and necessary?

h/t: Tom Bradley at PCWorld.com