Waxman’s flip flop is the most recent unlucky turn in the on-again, off- fight over regulatory limitations on the network management practices of broadband ISPs.

The FCC’s latest proposal, made public in May, signifies the third effort by the bureau in the past decade to develop what the bureau and Waxman call “prophylactic” rules to defend the Web from possibly dangerous future practices.

Without such rules, supporters maintain, ISPs may left principles of network neutrality, which in general hold that ISPs shouldn’t block discriminate or lawful content in delivering packages to consumers for reasons that are anticompetitive.

However, the argument was hampered by shifting demands and definitions, leaving the term abstract and divorced from real network engineering and design.

Without FCC actions, most of the possible practices that seem to move neutrality activists are already prohibited under existing antitrust and rivalry laws. For this reason the Internet remains an open platform for users and service providers, regardless of the dearth of FCC rules.

That reality is no injury. The bureau’s previous two attempts, including a yearlong activity in rulemaking that used up the FCC in 2010, have been rejected by the courts for transcending the quite limited jurisdiction on the internet of the bureau under the 1996 Communications Act.

But Waxman is currently encouraging the FCC to dismiss the law and undertake a complex and lawfully unsettled “hybrid approach” to evade the limitations on its power determined by Congress.

Title II dates back to 1934 written to manage the government-sanctioned monopoly of the former Bell telephone system. It contains provisions that require FCC and state utility commission permission to alter or retire outdated gear, and even to establish or alter rates, introduce new services.

Subsequently, in a closing touch of judo that is legal, he encourages the agency to invoke present powers the court acknowledged before this year under another section of the law, Section 706, to reinstate the 2010 variant of the prophylactic rules of the FCC.