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Furthermore, 47 U.S.C. § 207, which applies to
broadband providers once they are subject to Title II,
increases uncertainty yet more. Section 207 allows “[a]ny
person claiming to be damaged by any common carrier . . .
[to] either make complaint to the Commission . . . , or . . .
bring suit for the recovery of the damages for which such
common carrier may be liable under the provisions of this
chapter.” In other words, reclassification exposes broadband
providers to the direct claims of supposedly injured parties,
further increasing uncertainty and risk. In short, the Order’s
probable direct effect on investment in broadband seems
unambiguously negative.
As to the hoped-for indirect effect, the idea that it will be
positive depends on the supposition that these new rules (the
specific and the general) will cure some material problem,
will avert some threat that either is now burdening the internet
or could reasonably be expected to do so absent the
Commission’s intervention. Why, precisely, the observer
wants to know, has the Commission repudiated the policy
judgment it made in 2002, that “broadband services should
exist in a minimal regulatory environment that promotes
investment and innovation in a competitive market”?
Declaratory Ruling ¶ 5. The answer evidently turns on the
Commission’s conclusion that broadband providers have
indulged (or will indulge) in behavior that threatens the
internet’s “virtuous cycle.” Indeed, the majority points to the
need to reclassify broadband so that the Commission could
promulgate the rules as the Commission’s “‘good reason’ for
[its] change in position,” Maj. Op. 43, and indeed its only
reason. But the record contains multiple reasons for thinking
that the Commission’s new rules will retard rather than
enhance the “virtuous cycle,” and the Commission’s failure to
answer those objections renders its decision arbitrary and
capricious. I now turn to those arguments, first in the context
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