Tweet
Net neutrality is dead. Bow to Comcast and Verizon, your overlords
Net neutrality's last hope? FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler. (Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg / January 14, 2014)
By Michael Hiltzik
January 14, 2014, 3:05 p.m.
Advocates of a free and open Internet could see this coming, but today's ruling from a Washington appeals court striking down the FCC's rules protecting the open net was worse than the most dire forecasts. It was "even more emphatic and disastrous than anyone expected," in the words of one veteran advocate for network neutrality.
The Court of Appeals for the D.C. circuit thoroughly eviscerated the Federal Communications Commission's latest lame attempt to prevent Internet service providers from playing favorites among websites--awarding faster speeds to sites that pay a special fee, for example, or slowing or blocking sites and services that compete with favored affiliates.
Big cable operators like Comcast and telecommunications firms like Verizon, which brought the lawsuit on which the court ruled, will be free to pick winners and losers among websites and services.
http://www.latimes.com/business/hilt...#axzz2xfufmvuI
Net neutrality's last hope? FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler. (Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg / January 14, 2014)
By Michael Hiltzik
January 14, 2014, 3:05 p.m.
Advocates of a free and open Internet could see this coming, but today's ruling from a Washington appeals court striking down the FCC's rules protecting the open net was worse than the most dire forecasts. It was "even more emphatic and disastrous than anyone expected," in the words of one veteran advocate for network neutrality.
The Court of Appeals for the D.C. circuit thoroughly eviscerated the Federal Communications Commission's latest lame attempt to prevent Internet service providers from playing favorites among websites--awarding faster speeds to sites that pay a special fee, for example, or slowing or blocking sites and services that compete with favored affiliates.
Big cable operators like Comcast and telecommunications firms like Verizon, which brought the lawsuit on which the court ruled, will be free to pick winners and losers among websites and services.
http://www.latimes.com/business/hilt...#axzz2xfufmvuI