The following is from a Los Angeles Times editorial:
The battle over federal "net neutrality" rules resumes Monday when a federal appeals court takes up the challenge filed by one of the country's largest Internet service providers: Verizon. The company asserts that ISPs have a First Amendment right to edit or block the data flowing from websites to their customers. The company's stance is strange, considering its long-standing efforts to be freed from liability for the "speech" that travels through its wires. The court should reject it.
Adopted by the Federal Communications Commission in December 2010, the neutrality rules prohibit ISPs on wired networks from blocking legal sites and services, imposing extra charges to deliver a website's data to subscribers or "unreasonably" prioritizing some types of traffic over others. That treatment has been a standard practice among ISPs since the first data were transmitted. The commission's order does not stop ISPs from offering "specialized" services over the same wires that give preference to content partners; an example is the pay-TV service Verizon sells through FiOS lines.
Verizon argues that "just as a newspaper is entitled to decide which content to publish and where, broadband providers may feature some content over others." That would be true if ISPs marketed connections that looked like cable TV, with packages of sites it selected.
Nor is delivering data from a website to one's customers a form of legally protected speech. Internet access that ISPs provide isn't an expression, it's a conduit.
If Verizon wishes to offer a service with content that it curates for users, or that lets content providers pay for prioritized access to its customers, it's free to do so under the commission's rules. That's the thrust of the neutrality rules. It's worth preserving.