• by Wendy Davis , Staff Writer @wendyndavis, January 16, 2014

This week's decision invalidating net neutrality rules could lead to “disastrous” consequences, Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn) says today in a letter to the Federal Communications Commission.

“Now, there is no law to stop Wal-Mart from paying Comcast for preferential treatment so that its website loads more quickly and with better quality than the website of the small business in Wilmar,” he writes in a letter to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler. “There is no way to stop Time Warner from blocking all movie websites except HBO and all news websites except CNN.”

Franken urges Wheeler to “act quickly” to “implement new rules that will preserve access to the Internet.”

“The Internet was developed at taxpayers' expense to benefit the public interest,” Franken writes. “It belongs to all of us. And net neutrality keeps it that way.”

Franken was responding to this week's D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling, which struck down the two most important parts of the FCC's 2010 net neutrality rules -- anti-discrimination and anti-blocking provisions. Those rules banned providers from blocking, degrading or discriminating against lawful content, apps and services.

Verizon challenged the neutrality provisions in court, arguing that the FCC exceeded its authority by attempting to regulate broadband. The appellate court largely agreed, ruling that the anti-blocking and anti-discrimination rules effectively imposed common carrier requirements on broadband companies. Telephone companies have long had to follow common carrier principles by putting through all phone calls. But telephone companies are regulated under a portion of the law that deals with “telecommunications” services. Broadband, by contrast, was classified by the FCC in 2002 as an “information” service -- which isn't subject to common carrier rules.

While Franken doesn't explicitly ask Wheeler to reclassify broadband as a telecommunications service, many legal commentators have said that doing so is the only way to impose legally enforceable neutrality rules.