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MEDIA ADVISORY January 14, 2014
Contact: Randolph May at 202-285-9926
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FSF's Randolph May Reacts to D.C. Circuit Court's Net Neutrality Decision
Free State Foundation President Randolph May issued the following statement regarding today's decision by the D.C. Circuit Court reviewing the FCC's net neutrality regulations:
"While I don't necessarily agree with the D.C. Circuit's reasoning regarding the scope of the FCC's authority under Section 706 of the Communications Act, I am very pleased that the court held that the Commission acted unlawfully in imposing the anti-blocking and anti-discrimination net neutrality regulations on Internet service providers such as Verizon. For many years, I have argued that net neutrality prohibitions such as these, in effect, convert the Internet providers into common carriers. I am pleased the court agreed that the FCC lacks authority to impose such a common carrier regime on Internet providers. This is a very important ruling.
The prudent thing now is for the FCC to stand down and observe how the Internet ecosystem continues to develop. There is certainly no reason for the agency to consider taking any further action now to revive net neutrality or net neutrality-like regulations. There was no market failure or consumer harm at the time the FCC adopted the regulations that have now been held unlawful, and, I suspect, given the technological and marketplace dynamism that presently characterizes the Internet ecosystem, that will remain the case."
Randolph J. May, President of the Free State Foundation, is a former FCC Associate General Counsel and a former Chairman of the American Bar Association's Section of Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice. Mr. May is a public member of the Administrative Conference of the United States, and a Fellow at the National Academy of Public Administration.
Mr. May is a nationally recognized expert in communications law, Internet law and policy, and administrative law and regulatory practice. He is the author of more than 150 scholarly articles and essays on communications law and policy, administrative law, and constitutional law. Most recently, Mr. May is the editor of the new book, "Communications Law and Policy in the Digital Age: The Next Five Years." He is the author of A Call for a Radical New Communications Policy: Proposals for Free Market Reform. And he is the editor of the book, New Directions in Communications Policy and co-editor of other two books on communications law and policy: Net Neutrality or Net Neutering: Should Broadband Internet Services Be Regulated? and Communications Deregulation and FCC Reform.
The Free State Foundation is a non-profit, independent Section 501(c)(3) free market-oriented think tank. 
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The Free State Foundation
P. O. Box 60680
Potomac, MD 20859
Tel: 301-984-8253
Fax: 301-299-5007
www.freestatefoundation.org
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