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The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled 3-0 that the FCC has no legal authority to enforce net neutrality on broadband providers. Providers could, for example, charge extra for larger files, or restrict access to sites that provide content they don’t approve of, or— as Comcast has already done— sent forged packets to their own customers to terminate peer-to-peer sessions.

Comcast has said it has changed its policies in this and other regard, and now supports net neutrality . . . especially now that they need the FCC’s permission to buy NBC. (My god, a more disastrous owner for NBC than GE! Just imagine!) The Court of Appeals decision, for example, would allow Comcast to give you NBC for free, while charging extra for any network they didn’t happen to own.

This also means that broadband networks no longer have any reason to spend money to increase their bandwidth— not when they can just charge you extra for putting a strain on the crappy network they’re giving you now! (AT&T, I’m talkin’ to YOU!)

Without network neutrality, the Internet— which is currently my chief source of news and information— becomes yet another conduit for the views of the billionaires that own it, just like every other damn network.

Now there’s a school of thought that says that the FCC has no business regulating the Internet. I have a certain sympathy for this point of view, as I’d rather the Internet remain the Wild West cow town that it is now. But if there’s only one road out of the cow town, and the mustache-twirling bad guy who owns the road is allowed to charge some people enormous fares while letting his friends ride free, then I say there needs to be a new sheriff in town.