A group of 86 organizations, with the support of more than one million signatures from online petitions, asked the Federal Communications Commission on Thursday to stand up for net neutrality.

The coalition, which includes Reddit, the American Civil Liberties Union, Fight for The Future and Free Press, is asking the FCC to reclassify broadband companies such as Internet ISPs and cable providers as "telecommunication services," thus giving the commission the authority to impose net neutrality rules on them.

"It’s time for the new FCC leadership to correct the agency’s past mistakes and reassert its clear authority over our nation’s communications infrastructure," read a letter signed by the 86 organizations and sent to the FCC on Thursday. "To preserve the open Internet, the FCC must reclassify the transmission component of broadband Internet access as a telecommunications service."

When a D.C. Appeals Court struck down net neutrality rules just more than two weeks ago, Internet freedom advocates sounded the alarm.

"Everyone can read the writing on the wall," Joshua Levy, the Internet campaign director for the Free Press, told Mashable. "The Internet as we know it, as we've come to know it, is going to disappear and is going to be replaced by a 'cable-ized' version that costs more money and that makes it harder to access the stuff that we want."

Advocates developed nightmare scenarios as a result of the ruling: Cable companies throttling Netflix to force customers to watch cable channels instead, or ISPs blocking sites or making some load more quickly than others. None of this has happened yet, but after the ruling, experts agreed it was possible.

A silver lining did emerge, however. The court struck down net neutrality rules not because of their content, but because ISPs and cable companies are not classified as "telecommunications services." As such, the FCC does not have the authority to regulate cable providers and ISPs to avoid consumer discrimination. But the court also stated that the FCC has the authority to reclassify them and then enforce the rules.

Internet freedom expert Marvin Ammori wrote on Slate that even though this battle was lost, there was a chance to win the war — but the FCC must act.

Tim Wu, a Columbia Law School professor and the individual who coined the term "net neutrality" more than ten years ago, agreed with him, writing that "restoring the [FCC's] long-standing authority over broadband telecommunications is much simpler than it appears."

The coalition of 86 organizations hopes that its letter, along with the more than one million signatures delivered, will force the FCC to take action and save net neutrality. The signatures were collected through various online petitions, including by the Free Press and Avaaz.

"The only way we are going to win this long-term fight is by showing the FCC how much support there is around the country from regular people for this idea of reclassification and how much they're depending on the FCC to do this," Levy, the Free Press internet campaign director, said.

Levy warned that it won't be easy. Cable giants and ISPs don't want to be subject to regulation, and Republicans will try to stop the FCC from reclassifying broadband services. The FCC, meanwhile, has not yet endorsed the idea of reclassification, leaning toward enforcing the rules on a case-by-case basis, as the National Journal reported on Tuesday.