Future of the Internet unclear following court ruling against net neutrality

With the “Open Internet” rule struck down by a US court, the future of the online landscape is now murkier than ever.

An appeals court in Washington this week ruled unconstitutional a “Net Neutrality” rule that bars broadband Internet providers from discriminating or playing favorites for online services.

Future of the Internet unclear following court ruling against net neutrality

Well this isn't good news, people need to stand up for a free internet. This is something I hope people everywhere can get behind regardless of political views. Sites like this or other alternative news sites will of course be the first victims of this.

reply to post by Unilluminist


I really wonder how attached to the "open internet" people are. I'm guessing few people will understand the effects of losing net neutrality and unfettered access to alternate media. There must be sinister manifestations of control before anyone understands the term "net neutrality" and by then, it may be too late to recover.

I don't believe mega corps. and sovereigns have much use for open exchange of information so I think I see where this is all going. Not to a good place.

reply to post by Unilluminist


This is an overstepping of the boundaries and legal durisdicion of any court be it national or international, the internet is a virtual territory outside the realms of any state (though lets be fair the peodophiles and other modertely less evil scum such as terrorists have abused it for years now).
What this in essence is when looked at is an invasion under national laws of an international territory, now while I do believe some form of censorship should be agreed to stop the aformentioned abuse it must be voluntarily complied with by the service providers and not forced unless the so called free world wishes to impose totalitarian state controls (which is patently obviouse to be the case here,.), for all the bad things the net can be accused of and lets be fair there is a large bag of potential and actual things it is also a medium of free speech and political change, what these people do not realize is that by closing peoples mouths they will force free expression to take more litteral and often far more dangerouse form.
Power hungry low intelligence war mongering Idiot's.
Right now the internet serves as a pressure valve for free speech but like any such when it is closed where does all that angry righteous indignation at corrupt government and injustice go if not into a built up explosion.

I hope I get to be grandfathered...

This is a big move, although I am still trying to understand the exact magnitude of it.

One thing that I can think of is streaming video. I "fired" my cable company last year and decided to use broadcast and streaming for our entertainment. Now, I expect the cable cos (one of whom provides my internet service) can start charging the likes of Netflix and HuluPlus very high per MB charges, as the cable cos are losing their butts to the likes of Netflix.

Also, I can see alternative sites priced out of this game.

He who owns the Internet wins. The ISPs, and the cable cos, stand to be the big winners. The rest of us are the losers.

Very disappointing ruling.

reply to post by Jchristopher5


Well, frankly speaking, the entire point of the lobbyists who pushed this through (you didn't really think the politicians came up with this, did you?) was to ensure that the law would allow the providers to create a meme of "value" to their "allowing" users to access the internet without throttling. Interestingly, they still throttle everyone's usage, even the "premium" users.

The problem is, the political class has accepted the idea that the market is more important than the consumers. This is not new however, the commercial worshipers of the market god did the same thing with phone service, energy delivery, and anything else they could get away with. (The only reason we are not seeing this with water costs is because they have yet to make laws which empower the service to have tiers... they will eventually though..., just wait and see.)

The internet is yet one more example of how the government has yielded to lobbyists in support commercial revenue stream generation over the demands of consumers who have no say; either pay, or remain without access the providers themselves meter as if they "owned" the internet.

The minutiae about file sharing, streaming, and such are all extraneous to the fact that the internet simply "is there" and generally speaking, we can not just 'access' it without money crossing someone's palm. They will cite their "investment" as rationale for their 'deserving' more money to dole it out according to their owners' designs.

Technically they are saying that the FCC never had the right to regulate ISPs in the way that telecoms are regulated, no one is actually saying net neutrality is a bad idea.

It's also important to note that the net neutrality laws never applied to mobile providers, and that has gone alright so far.

That said, there are clearly no laws stopping my provider from inching my internet price up a few dollars every month.

Don't worry so much, it's not like some laws are going to suddenly put these big companies in their place and stop us getting screwed.

TheBlackTiger
Technically they are saying that the FCC never had the right to regulate ISPs in the way that telecoms are regulated, no one is actually saying net neutrality is a bad idea.

It's also important to note that the net neutrality laws never applied to mobile providers, and that has gone alright so far.

Really? That's why if I go into Verizon looking for a USB dongle to get 3g or 4g access to my laptop costs $250, for 2 gigs worth of bandwidth every month, at a month to month cost of $60/month plus a $20/month line fee. $250 upfront and $80/month for 2 gigs worth of data. Do you seriously call that ok?

Neither bandwidth caps or exorbitant prices are against the law but it doesn't exactly give me faith in them. Especially when it costs about 3 cents to run 1 gig worth of data (including the costs of labor and equipment). Competition is not keeping prices down on mobile networks, that's a strike against competition keeping non neutral networks in line.

reply to post by Aazadan


A lot of people are unhappy with the service and/or pricing of their mobile and home carriers, but I'm not sure how that relates to net neutrality.

If net neutrality laws applied to mobile carriers, then the USB dongle would be cheaper? Or the price per gigabyte would go down? More likely they'd use the "additional regulation" as an excuse to put more fees on your bill...

Net neutrality has more to do with what amounts to censoring other providers' content. Like for example, AT&T can't make a deal with google and say "If you give us a bunch of money, we'll make it so that Bing loads up really slow." Or things along those lines.

The biggest risk of losing net neutrality laws is probably companies like Netflix getting throttled by content-producing carriers.
However, not all carriers or ISPs produce content or are related to someone who does, so it is unlikely that any company would willingly give up their entire netflix-purchasing customer base to a competitor that doesn't care who you buy your video content from.

Net neutrality has been way overplayed.
Someone earlier in this thread summed it up quite well:
The lobbyists wanted those laws.