The FCC's decision to sanction Comcast for its 2007 P2P blocking was overruled today by the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit. The question before the court was whether the FCC had the legal authority to "regulate an Internet service provider's network management practice." According to a three-judge panel, "the Commission has failed to make that showing" and the FCC's order against Comcast is tossed.

When the complaints against Comcast first surfaced, they noted that the company was violating the FCC's "Internet Policy Statement" drafted in 2005. That statement provided "four freedoms" to Internet users, including freedom from traffic discrimination apart from reasonable network management. The FCC decided that Comcast's actions had not been "reasonable network management," but Comcast took to the agency to court, arguing that the FCC had no right to regulate its network management practices at all.

The Internet Policy Statement was not a rule; instead, it was a set of guidelines, and even the statement admitted that the principles weren't legally enforceable. To sanction Comcast, the FCC relied on its "ancillary" jurisdiction to implement the authority that Congress gave it—but was this kind of network management ruling really within the FCC's remit?

The court held that it wasn't, that Congress had never given the agency the authority necessary to do this, and that the entire proceeding was illegitimate. The FCC's "Order" against Comcast is therefore vacated; Comcast wins.

The decision wasn't a surprise; during oral argument earlier this year, the judges pressed the FCC's top lawyer repeatedly. The Policy Statement was "aspirational, not operational," they said; the FCC had not identified a "specific statute" Comcast violated; and the FCC "can't get an unbridled, roving commission to go about doing good."

Comcast pledged some time ago to change the way it handled traffic management, and it has already transitioned to a protocol-agnostic approach to congestion.