From the early days of broadband, advocates for consumers and web-based companies worried that the cable and phone companies selling broadband connections had the power and incentive to favor affiliated websites over their rivals. That’s why there has been such a strong demand for rules that would prevent broadband providers from picking winners and losers online, preserving the freedom and innovation that have been the lifeblood of the internet.
从宽带发展初期起，消费者和网络公司的拥护者就担心，销售宽带连接的有线电视和电话公司有能力和动机支持附属网站而不是竞争对手。这就是为什么人们对规则有如此强烈的需求，这些规则将阻止宽带提供商在网上挑选赢家和输家，从而保护一直是互联网命脉的自由和创新。
Yet that demand has been almost impossible to fill-in part because of pushback from broadband providers, anti-regulatory conservatives and the courts. A federal appeals court weighed in again Tuesday, but instead of providing badly needed resolution, it only prolonged the fight. At issue before the U. S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit was the latest take of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on net neutrality, adopted on a party-line vote in 2017. The Republican-penned order not only eliminated the strict net neutrality rules the FCC had adopted when it had a Democratic majority in 2015, but rejected the commission’s authority to require broadband providers to do much of anything. The order also declared that state and local governments couldn’t regulate broadband providers either.
然而，由于宽带提供商、反监管保守派和法院的抵制，这种需求几乎不可能得到满足。一家联邦上诉法院星期二再次介入，但没有提供急需的解决方案，只是延长了战斗时间。美国哥伦比亚特区巡回上诉法院（U.S.Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit）面临的争议是联邦通信委员会（FCC）对网络中立性的最新看法，该观点于2017年在党内投票中获得通过。这项由共和党人起草的命令不仅取消了FCC在2015年民主党占多数时通过的严格的网络中立规则，而且拒绝了委员会要求宽带提供商做任何事情的权力。该命令还宣布，州和地方政府也不能监管宽带提供商。
The commission argued that other agencies would protect against anti-competitive behavior, such as a broadband-providing conglomerate like AT&T favoring its own video-streaming service at the expense of Netflix and Apple TV. Yet the FCC also ended the investigations of broadband providers that imposed data caps on their rivals’ streaming services but not their own.
该委员会认为，其他机构将防范反竞争行为，比如像美国电话电报公司（AT&T）这样的宽带提供商，以牺牲Netflix和苹果电视（Apple TV）为代价，支持自己的视频流服务。然而，联邦通信委员会也结束了对宽带提供商的调查，他们对竞争对手的流媒体服务施加数据上限，而不是对自己的流媒体服务施加数据上限。
On Tuesday, the appeals court unanimously upheld the 2017 order deregulating broadband providers, citing a Supreme Court ruling from 2005 that upheld a similarly deregulatory move. But Judge Patricia Millett rightly argued in a concurring opinion that “the result is unhinged from the realities of modern broadband service,” and said Congress or the Supreme Court could intervene to “avoid trapping Internet regulation in technological anachronism.”
同样，最高法院于2017年2月1日宣布撤销对宽带提供商的监管，并一致维持了这一判决。但帕特里夏·米利特法官在一份一致的意见中正确地指出，“这一结果与现代宽带服务的现实脱节”，并表示国会或最高法院可以进行干预，以“避免互联网监管陷入技术不合时宜的境地”
In the meantime, the court threw out the FCC’s attempt to block all state rules on net neutrality, while preserving the commission’s power to preempt individual state laws that undermine its order. That means more battles like the one now going on between the Justice Department and California, which enacted a tough net neutrality law in the wake of the FCC’s abdication.
与此同时，法院驳回了联邦通信委员会试图阻止所有关于网络中立的州规则的企图，同时保留了联邦通信委员会优先于破坏其秩序的各州法律的权力。这意味着司法部和加利福尼亚州之间会有更多类似的斗争，在联邦通讯委员会退位后，加利福尼亚州颁布了一项严厉的网络中立法。
The endless legal battles and back-and-for at the FCC cry out for Congress to act. It needs to give the commission explicit authority once and for all to bar broadband providers from meddling in the traffic on their network and to create clear rules protecting openness and innovation online.
联邦通信委员会没完没了的法律斗争和反反复复要求国会采取行动。它需要一劳永逸地赋予委员会明确的权力，禁止宽带提供商干预其网络流量，并制定明确的规则，保护在线开放和创新。
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