On Thursday, the US House Republicans voted 244-181 in favor of blocking the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) from enforcing new 'net neutrality' regulations that essentially prohibit broadband providers from blocking or unreasonably discriminating against legal content, applications and services on their networks.

Attacking the FCC rules on the grounds that they are onerous as well as uncalled for, and saying that the agency had overstepped its authority in creating the rules, the House Representatives late Thursday passed an amendment - to its government funding bill for the year - which was sponsored by Republican Rep. Greg Walden of Oregon.

Attached to H. R. 1 - the continuing resolution which defines the federal government's spending during the fiscal year -, the amendment will not only rescind the FCC's new net neutrality rules, but will also ban the agency from using government money to enforce its rules during the ongoing fiscal year.

The main argument that the Republicans have put forth against net neutrality is that the rules will make it too difficult for phone and cable companies to earn a notable return on the investments they may have made to upgrade their broadband networks; thereby discouraging them to continue the upgrade of the networks.

In addition, it is also being argued that the rules do give providers flexibility enough for managing data on their systems to deal with network jamming as well as unwanted traffic, including spam, as long as they publicly disclose those practices.