Earlier this year the highest appeals court in the land ruled in favor of Verizon and against the FCC (Verizon v. FCC), ultimately concluding that the agency did not have the jurisdiction to enforce its Open Internet Order under the Telecommunications Act.

Advocacy group Free Press is not happy about the FCC's future changes to the Open Internet Order of 2010. They have several useful links that will make it easier for you to let your voice be heard at the FCC and multiple articles on why FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler's proposal will do more harm than good to Net Neutrality.

After releasing a brief statement to news outlets about the FCC's plan to change rules related to net neutrality that seemed to be favorable to broadband internet providers, FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler decided that a more robust statement was needed today.

On the official FCC blog, Chairman Wheeler tried to explain how the new proposals for Net Neutrality would work and how it would contain safeguards to protect both content providers and consumers from “commercially unreasonable” practices by ISPs.

After news broke yesterday that the Federal Communications Commission would allow service providers like Comcast and Verizon to charge content providers like Netflix and Amazon more for faster path to customers, the Internet at large deemed the move "the death of net neutrality as we know it." But the guy who wrote the new proposal says that this characterization is flat out wrong and that there has been no "turnaround in policy" a

Net Neutrality - the idea that all Internet traffic should be treated equally as it flows to consumers - took a fatal blow today. So what happened to the grand promise of a free and open Internet in one day? Well, word leaked out that Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler plans to allow content providers such as Disney, Google, Amazon, Netflix and others to pay Internet service providers like Comcast and Verizon for special, faster lanes to send video and other broadband consuming content to their customers under new rules.

It is likely that Comcast will have no problems getting the support of U.S. lawmakers for its proposed $45.2 billion merger with Time Warner Cable. Why, you ask? Well according to several campaign finance watchdog groups (as reported by Ars Technica), the majority of lawmakers reviewing the merger in hearings have taken campaign contributions from the cable operator directly or indirectly.

After saying less than a month ago that its deal to pay Comcast for direct access to its customers had little to do with net neutrality rules, entertainment streaming service Netflix has changed its tune and has come out swinging against America's top service providers.

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said in a blog post on Thursday that once it agreed to pay Comcast its subscribers no longer had any problems with service speeds.

Speaking on NBC's "Press:Here" show over the weekend, Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.) said that it's a good thing that the Federal Communications Commission has decided to tackle the thorny task of tweaking the Open Internet Order (commonly referred to as "net neutrality") because it will empower consumers.

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler issued a statement today laying out the agency’s strategy for preserving and restoring open Internet policies, but also confirmed that the FCC had no plans on appealing an earlier court decision in the case against Verizon. The Appeals Court ruled that the agency did not have the authority to enforce its net neutrality rules over broadband networks under section 706 of the Telecommunications Act.

The Obama Administration has responded to a petition on "We The People" calling on the president to compel the FCC to fix net neutrality rules and lobby congress to do the same. In its response the administration reaffirmed its commitment to net neutrality rules, while at the same time highlighting the fact that the Federal Communications Commission is an independent agency.

Senator Al Franken (D-Minnesota) has come out strongly against a proposed merger between Comcast and Time Warner Cable. In a letter to the Federal Communications Commission, the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission, Sen. Franken said that there is already not enough competition in this [we assume he means broadband and cable television] space and this deal goes in the wrong direction. He also said that he is thinks this deal will increase cable prices and decreased the quality of service for Time Warner Cable customers.

Comcast is expected to announce a deal worth $44 billion to buy out rival cable operator Time Warner Cable today, according to a Bloomberg report. The company will reportedly announce today that it plans to pay $159 a share to Time Warner Stock holders.

California US Reps. Henry Waxman and Anna Eshoo (both Democrats) submitted legislation this week that would reinstate the net neutrality rules recently struck down by a D.C Federal Appeals Court decision. Rules that were part of the Open Internet Order preventing Internet service providers from blocking or discriminating against content were vacated last month after a Federal Judge said that the Federal Communications Commission failed to properly justify its authority to implement them.

This week rights group Free Press led a coalition of organizations (including the ACLU, Avaaz, Common Cause, ColorOfChange, CREDO, DailyKos, Demand Progress, Fight for the Future, the Harry Potter Alliance, MoveOn, RootsAction and the Sierra Club's SierraRise community) that delivered a petition signed by one million people to the Federal Communications Commission urging the agency do whatever it has to do to restore Net Neutrality.

The Entertainment Consumers Association (ECA) has issued an action alert concerning the future of net neutrality, asking its members and the Internet community at large to contact their representatives in Congress, President Barack Obama, and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and ask them to preserve and revise the Open Internet Order so that it can survive future legal challenges.

The U.S. Court of Appeals struck down part of the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC) rules on Net Neutrality today, in a clear victory for Verizon and other service providers who say the agency doesn't have jurisdiction over mobile and broadband.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has put the brakes on a plan by AT&T to raise prices for "special access" customers, which could have led to a rate hike to businesses and cell phone users. AT&T had planned to make that hike happen today, but the FCC stepped in and suspended the action for five months while it conducts an investigation on the matter.

Newly anointed FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said this week that it would be okay for Internet service providers to charge Netflix and other companies for a faster lane to consumers. While some think that Wheeler's stance is surprising given that the FCC implemented the Open Internet Order in 2010 to stop ISPs from discriminating against certain types of traffic, anyone who knows Wheeler's past is not in the least bit surprised. Wheeler is a former lobbyist for the cable and wireless industries.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is rolling out a broadband speed test app for Android phones beginning this week, with plans for an iOS version sometime later down the road. The app was announced at the Nov. 14 meeting, which was the first under the agency's new chairman Tom Wheeler.

"If we are going to be making fact-based decisions, we need facts," said Wheeler, "and you are enlisting the American people for those facts."

Michael Powell, a former Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chairman (under President George W Bush) and now President and CEO of the National Cable and Telecommunications Association (NCTA), recently said that ISPs should be moving with urgency to implement data caps on their customers.

His remarks, chronicled by Multichannel News at the recent Cable-Tec Expo in Atlanta, were in response to a question about data caps.

According to The Hill, one of the demands that Republican lawmakers in the House of Representatives have put forth calls for a repeal of the FCC's rules on net neutrality.

According to the publication, a memo was circulated late last week amongst Republican lawmakers detailing some of the demands that they have put forth as a condition of passing a budget and raising the debt ceiling.

In the early hours of a three-judge panel hearing this morning at the Federal Appeals Court, the FCC's net neutrality rules took some strong criticism from the bench. The Federal Appeals court expressed "deep concerns" that the agency's "net neutrality" rules approved in late 2010 are completely legal. Verizon argued before the panel this morning for two hours, saying that the rules were not legal because they were not implemented by lawmakers and that the FCC does not have the authority to enforce them.

Today the Federal Appeals Court will hear arguments in a case against the FCC's net neutrality rules. Verizon will go before a three-judge panel to argue that the "Open Internet Order" does not have the approval of the Congress and that the FCC does not have the authority to regulate broadband and mobile Internet services. The company will also claim that the rules are "arbitrary and capricious" and violate the company's constitutional rights.

Ars Technica points out that Google Fiber's terms of service has a clause that a lot of its subscribers probably don't know about: if you don't have a written agreement with the company in advance, you are not allowed to host any type of server on its connection.

Departing FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell (Republican) says that one of the commission's biggest failures was net neutrality while one of its greatest triumphs while he was there was reform of the Universal Service Fund. He along with FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski (Democrat) announced last week that they would be leaving the agency shortly.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) confirmed a story that had been circulating the internet over the last 24 hours: that Chairman Julius Genachowski will be leaving his position "in the coming weeks." Genachowski pushed hard for universal broadband and net neutrality but with limited success.

Senator Jay Rockefeller (D - West Virginia) has introduced a bill that would have the U.S. National Academy of Sciences study how video games and other media like films and television affect children. The bill would also expand studies already conducted by the Federal Trade Commission and Federal Communications Commission.

Former Virginia Republican State Senate Candidate and online mass marketer Jason Flanary is asking the Federal Communications Commission to whitelist "political messaging" (or spam as many who receive it but don't want it call it) or declare bulk messaging and email as general protected free speech. He is doing this under the idea that limiting messaging is a violation of his free speech rights and net neutrality rules.

If you're tired of the captain on your flight telling you to shut off all your electronic devices during take-offs and landings, you may be happy to hear that the FAA is continuing to examine whether such steps are necessary because there's little proof to support the notion that such devices actually interfere with an aircraft's vital electronic equipment. You might be even more delighted to hear that the FCC thinks those restrictions should be lifted as well.

Late last week several amicus briefs were filed taking exception to Verizon's argument in its federal court case against the FCC's net neutrality rules, calling their claim of "censorship" hypocritical. Those filing amicus briefs included the Center for Democracy and Technology (also co-signed by a group of law professors), a brief written by former FCC chief Reed Hundt (co-signed by several other former FCC commissioners), and