It’s ON:

The Federal Communications Commission staked out new ground nearly three months ago when it began drafting rules that would require Internet providers to give equal treatment to all data flowing over their networks.Now the FCC hopes to use a dispute with the nation’s largest cable TV and Internet provider to establish its legal authority to adopt such “network neutrality” regulations. The rules would aim to prevent phone and cable companies from abusing their control over the market for high-speed Internet access.

A federal appeals court was holding oral arguments Friday in Comcast Corp.’s challenge of the FCC’s 2008 order banning the company from blocking its broadband subscribers from using an online file-sharing technology known as BitTorrent.

The commission, at the time headed by Republican Kevin Martin, based its order against Comcast on a set of net-neutrality principles it adopted in 2005 to prevent broadband providers from favoring or discriminating against certain types of Internet traffic. Those principles have guided the FCC’s enforcement of communications laws on a case-by-case basis.

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