End of Net Neutrality. For anyone who games online

This is unfortunately coming true as an Appeals Court struck down the FCC's 2010 Net Neutrality order.

http://news.yahoo.com/u-appeals-court-kills-net-neutrality-152413671.html;_ylt=AwrTWf1aZdVSqhQA2hzQtDMD

What does this mean? If you play games online, buy from any marketplace online, watch any videos online, use Playstation Network, X-Box Live Arcade, Nintendo eShop, Steam, Go G, Apple iTunes, Google Play, or anything of that nature, get ready to see your internet service get throttled badly as the Internet Providers will create tiered services.

Well, dammit.

Can't really be that important though right? It's just one country.

It's important for the people who live in that one country.

Appeals Courts, no matter how powerful they are in their state, or at federal level, have to bow down to the Supreme Court. I see a challenge to that organization in the near future. Net neutrality may not be as dead as folks think.

Forgive if I'm skeptical.

@Melon: That's still hardly "anyone who games online". Way to put yourself before the rest of the world.

The Supreme Court has certainly made questionable decisions in the past.

Anyone who thinks the global internet service provider industry will NOT copy the American ones if they can get away with it is living in cloud cuckoo land, I fear. Throttling already exists in the UK and elsewhere in Europe.

Try "one district of one country" instead.

Doesn't this court have a history of deciding against the FCC?

This decision is going to affect much more than just DC.

edited 14th Jan '14 10:07:44 AM by stingerbrg

...How?

The DC Court of Appeals is seen by the rest of America as the ones whose example is worth following, and this decision sets a precedent that other local appeals courts may and will follow unless this decision gets shot in the neck by a higher court.

And the only higher court is the Supreme Court.

How about some chain of lawsuits, like, I don't know, EA getting on AT&T's ass for hurting their business, read: throttling Origin downloads or BF 4 packets? Or Sony doing the same, those guys have serious legal guns. This thing is bad for their business and as companies, they'd do best to protect their interests.

EA?

If anything EA will see dollar signs and charge folks for how stable a connection to their servers they can have.

Part of the problem is that, as of now, those companies are not directly impacted and are thus not members of the suit. The solution, of course, is amicus curiae briefings where they basically use their highly-paid lawyers to supply ammo to the net neutrality defense people as a "friend of the court".

As a citizen of the US I can safely say the government cannot afford to not give oversight to the broadband industry. As soon as they can Verizon will likely begin to abuse this power to gain more money and at that point the other providers will begin to follow suit.

There was a time when the internet was nothing but a commodity and completely unnecessary but in this day and age that time is gone. The web along with allowing 'tvtropes to ruin your life' has brought us tools such as Craigslist and Skype.

I find it ironic that Verizon as a web provider has begun to seek ways to not be able to provide access to specific areas of the web.

Hmm... so, what does this mean by "tiered services" exactly? Like, they'll charge per usage of an Internet service?

Forgive me for my dumbness. I'm not well-versed in the language of stuff.

edited 14th Jan '14 12:11:41 PM by NesClassic

I never really followed the net neutrality issue, basically because big companies will always get what they want with no repercussions, so fighting the inevitable tide was pointless.

If I recall, the issue is that your internet service provider isn't allowed to cut deals with companies to give them priority traffic. Legally, Comcast can't get a check from Microsoft to allocate X Box Live to receive more/better service than PSN or Steam. Once net neutrality is killed, your bandwidth will be controlled by whoever pays the most to the provider. You like Fox News? Well tough, Time Warner gets paid by Fox, they provide priority bandwidth to Fox News visitors, every other news site loads slower.

Correct me if I'm wrong, I don't follow lolpolitics and lolbusinesscrime.

edited 14th Jan '14 12:23:52 PM by Rotpar

So essentially, it's bribery? ...I now know that bribery is only illegal if it's used to influence politics or officials.

Damn you, American courts! *shakes fist skyward*

Essentially, it's business. Paying money to a person or organization in exchange for a good or service. In this case, it's one company paying another company to perform a service to them.

It's the dark side of capitalism, and plays into the larger debate of, "At what point does the government have to step in to regulate capitalism and say no, you can't do X?"

Personally, I think Net Neutrality is nowhere near done for yet. According to this:

In fact, the court explicitly said that the reason they struck down the rules was:

In other words, the FCC could easily patch the rules to thwart this particular challenge. And even if that fails, I'm willing to bet that there are a number of corporations who can be convinced to fight for net neutrality in court, simply because net neutrality is actually better for them, for the same reasons it's better for the average user.

Don't get me wrong: this is a blow, and possibly a dangerous blow. But this battle is far from lost.

edited 14th Jan '14 12:40:16 PM by MysteryMan23

That may be alright for the cities, but what of the rural areas, where there is only one broadband provider? Or none? Broadband service is still a monopolized utility in those areas.

Plus, it's no use when all providers start taking bribes.