The Future of Net Neutrality Might Rest on This Obscure Court Case

The Future of Net Neutrality Might Rest on This Obscure Court Case

There’s a huge court case you need to hear about. It might not be on your radar yet because, frankly, some of it gets pretty technical. But the outcome is likely to have enormous repercussions for online privacy, net neutrality and the economy.

For months, policymakers have been struggling with the implications of this case, FTC v. AT&T, in part because it overturned about a century’s worth of established legal practice and also, analysts say, because it appeared to open a wide loophole that businesses might use to evade most federal oversight.

On Tuesday the federal appeals court responsible for the ruling announced that it has agreed to rehear the case, potentially opening the door to a different result. Here’s everything you need to know.

In August, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit dealt the Federal Trade Commission a major blow by calling into question one of the consumer protection agency’s most important powers. The court said the FTC should be banned from regulating a company if even a small part of that firm’s business is regulated by the Federal Communications Commission as a telecom service, otherwise known as a “common carrier.”

Read full article at The Washington Post>>