U.S. Court of Appeals Upholds Classification of ISPs as Utilities ⇥ arstechnica.com

Jon Brodkin of Ars Technica has been following this case closely:

The US broadband industry has lost its lawsuit attempting to overturn the Federal Communications Commission’s net neutrality rules and the related reclassification of Internet service providers as common carriers.

ISPs’ First Amendment claims (among others) were rejected. “Because a broadband provider does not—and is not understood by users to—’speak’ when providing neutral access to Internet content as common carriage, the First Amendment poses no bar to the open Internet rules,” judges wrote in a decision released today by the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit (full text).

This is tremendous news, and a model that I hope is copied worldwide. The internet has become as essential to our lives as electricity; it should have the same kind of protections for consumers.