The U.S. Court of Appeals overturned a 2008 order issued on behalf of the FCC which forced Comcast to curtail network management maneuvers aimed at BitTorrent and P-to-P users.
In their ruling, the Justices - in a 3 to 1 vote - opined that the FCC lacked any “statutory mandated responsibility” to enforce network neutrality rules.
Industry insiders perceive the decision as a setback for the FCC.
“Today’s court decision means that nobody has the authority to stop the Nation’s broadband providers from interfering with the consumers’ online activities,” noted Robb Topolski, Chief technologist for the Open Technology Institute.”
In the final analysis, Comcast can block a customer’s access to applications, Verizon can change the behavior of DNS and change which web pages the user sees, AT & T can censor streaming media and block free speech (!), Charter can invade a user's privacy for the purposes of advertising, and Windstream can redirect Google searches to its own search engine.
A scary turn of events!
I trust that for the sake of Internet users the world-over, that the ruling will be appealed all the way to the Supreme Court, if necessary.
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