• by Wendy Davis , Staff Writer @wendyndavis, March 13, 2014

Now that the Federal Communications Commission has said it will consider passing new net neutrality rules, various groups are starting to weigh in with comments.

Among them is the longtime neutrality supporter Writers Guild of America East. That group warned today that rules against blocking and discrimination “are essential to maintaining the Internet as a place of innovation and access.”

“Permitting broadband providers to discriminate amongst content, to decide which programs get priority distribution, would transform the open architecture of the internet into a slightly upgraded version of today’s television and film industry,” the group writes. “We believe the public and the economy benefit from an Internet that offers a greater variety of options than what is currently available on television and radio and in movie theaters.”

The writers organization filed its comments in response to the FCC's Feb. 19 announcement that it would try -- again -- to craft neutrality rules. The agency's 2010 rules were struck down earlier this year by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Those rules, now invalidated, prohibited all broadband providers from blocking or degrading content. The former regulations also prohibited wireline -- but not wireless -- providers from engaging in unreasonable discrimination.

The appellate court said those rules wrongly treated broadband providers as if they were “common carriers.”

Common carriers, like phone companies, aren't allowed to engage in censorship. The FCC originally considered Internet access a telecommunications service, which is subject to common carrier obligations. But in 2002, the agency classified broadband as an information service, which isn't subject to common carrier obligations.

After that decision was issued, many neutrality advocates pressed FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler to reclassify broadband as a telecommunications service. Instead, Wheeler said that the FCC will consider using the agency's authority to promote broadband deployment to enact  new anti-discrimination and anti-blocking rules. Neutrality advocates are skeptical that approach will work, given the recent court ruling.

For now, the Writers Guild East is making its case for why open Internet rules are necessary. “Americans increasingly get all of their information and entertainment from a unified system of cables and cords which are controlled by a relative handful of gatekeepers,” the organization says. “These gatekeepers in turn have tremendous incentives to discriminate between content, to steer audiences to content the gatekeepers produce (as with Comcast/NBCU) or to content which is more profitable to carry... This is not the open, innovative Internet the American public needs and wants.”