The broadband industry made its appeal against the government's net neutrality rules last week to a three-judge panel on the US Court of Appeals: Judges Sri Srinivasan (whom we snapped at a Legal Aid dinner), Stephen Williams and David Tatel. Congressional budget proposals have had provisions to prevent the FCC from enforcing the net neutrality rules it made in June until broadband providers' court appeals are over with, writes Ars Technica—and tech companies like Etsy, Kickstarter, Tumblr and Vimeo are opposed to that.

The companies sent a letter to congressional leadership to urge them to "refrain from including riders relating to net neutrality and the FCC’s Open Internet Order in the upcoming omnibus spending legislation" as they "are harmful to innovation and the thriving startup culture."

The letter was also signed by consortiums with big-name members, such as the Computer and Communications Industry Alliance (which includes Amazon, eBay and Facebook), and Incompas (among whose voting members are Netflix, Google Fiber, Sprint and T-Mobile). [AT]