A few weeks ago, the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit rejected the FCC’s claim of authority to regulate Internet service. That was good news—and it sure didn’t create a crisis. It meant that the FCC would have to get authority from Congress if it wanted to regulate the Internet.

But a little hiccup in that plan quickly emerged: Congress won’t let the FCC regulate the Internet. Bills to do that have been floating around Capitol Hill for years, and they’ve never gotten traction.

So the proponents of government-controlled Internet access services have worked up an end-run around Congress: They want the FCC to try to reclassify Internet access from an unregulated “information service” to a “telecommunications service,” subject to common carrier regulation, like the monopoly phone system used to be (… and still is, generations after the monopoly ended).

Well, Larry Downes has been kicking the “reclassification” idea up and down the field. To relax, he’s been jumping up and down on “reclassification.” Recently, Downes had a dream in which he took out a gun and shot “reclassification.” When he awoke, he did not apologize.

I recommend reading his post on the TechLiberationFront blog.