If you think cable TV sucks, just wait. Craig Aaron, president and CEO of Free Press, says the end of the Internet as we know it is coming—unless we do something about that.

On Tuesday, the federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., trashed (PDF) the Federal Communications Commission’s “Open Internet” rules.

Translation: The judges just killed Net Neutrality.

Less-wonky translation: Verizon, AT&T, Time Warner Cable or whoever provides your Internet connection can now block, slow or otherwise mess with websites, apps and other services.

And the FCC—the agency that’s supposed to protect Internet users and oversee communications networks—can’t do anything about it.

Well, they can do one thing—which I’ll explain in a second.

But first …

What did the court actually say?

Let’s be clear: The court didn’t rule against Net Neutrality — that fundamental principle which ensures you can go wherever, browse whenever, and download whatever you want when you go online.

The court just invalidated the way the FCC tried to make Net Neutrality rules in a 2010 order. The judges rejected the legal framework used by the FCC and said the agency currently lacks the authority to implement and to enforce these rules.

Indeed, the court specifically stated that its “task as a reviewing court is not to assess the wisdom of the Open Internet Order regulations, but rather to determine whether the Commission has demonstrated that the regulations fall within the scope of its statutory grant of authority.”

So how did we get into this mess?

The reason the FCC’s authority to regulate broadband didn’t pass muster in court is because, under the Bush administration, the FCC abdicated its authority. At the urging of phone and cable lobbyists, the agency changed the way it treated broadband under the law. That was a huge mistake.

“We can still have Net Neutrality in America—but the FCC must reclaim its legal authority immediately.”

And so when the FCC tried to stop Comcast from blocking lawful file-sharing back in 2008, Comcast sued them claiming the agency didn’t have the authority. And Comcast won.

And when the FCC tried to implement watered-down but not completely worthless Net Neutrality rules in 2010, Verizon sued claiming they still lacked the authority. And Verizon won yesterday.

The silver lining is that there’s nothing in the court’s decision that prevents the FCC from reversing its earlier misguided decisions and treating broadband under the law as the “telecommunications service” it so obviously is.

Well, there’s nothing stopping the FCC but a lack of political will and the lobbying might of the telecom industry (which spends more to influence Washington than anybody outside the drug companies).

But both Tuesday’s decision and a prior decision by the Supreme Court in the 2005 Brand X case clearly establish that the FCC must “reclassify broadband” if it wishes to have any lasting ability to prohibit ISPs from blocking websites or discriminating against apps.

We can still have Net Neutrality in America—but the FCC must reclaim its legal authority immediately.

What if the FCC doesn’t act?

If you think cable TV sucks, just wait. ISPs like Time Warner Cable, AT&T and Verizon want to take the worst aspects of the cable system and impose them on the Internet.

Expect Internet blackouts that extend far beyond the popular content vendors, as smaller websites are caught in the crossfire. Tweets, emails and texts will be mysteriously delayed or dropped. Videos will load slowly, if at all. Websites will work fine one minute and freeze the next.

Your ISP will claim it’s not their fault, and you’ll have no idea who is to blame. You also won’t be able to vote with your feet or your wallet, because there’s no competition in broadband, and all the big ISPs will be playing this game.

You see, ISPs hate the idea that they’re nothing more than providers of “dumb pipes.” Now that they are free from any legal restraints, the ISPs will try to get Internet companies to pay extra tolls—and threaten to block or delay them if they don’t. Exclusive deals could become the norm, with AT&T exclusively bringing you Netflix, while Time Warner Cable is the sole source for YouTube.

Is that all?

Net Neutrality lowers the barriers of entry for entrepreneurs, startups and small businesses by ensuring the Web is a fair and level playing field. It’s because of Net Neutrality that small businesses and innovators have been able to thrive on the Internet. They use the Internet to reach new customers and showcase their goods, applications and services.

Without Net Neutrality, the next Google being built in a garage somewhere will never get off the ground.

And it gets worse. The court’s decision and the FCC’s bungling have put more in jeopardy than just Net Neutrality.

For example, the ruling threatens FCC efforts to modernize the universal service program to ensure that rural and low-income users are able to access affordable broadband services. We could see the progress made toward closing the digital divide come to a full stop.

And if privacy is your main concern, this ruling frees ISPs to monitor everything you do and say online—and sell that information to the highest bidder. ISPs have something that companies like Google and Facebook don’t: direct control over your connections to the Internet and the devices you use to connect to it.

So if this decision stands, it won’t be long before your ISP requires you to connect via their list of approved devices and then uses those devices to literally watch you. Forget about encryption—your ISP could require the key as condition of using its network.

Is there any hope?

Yes. The one thing, that aforementioned silver lining, is that the FCC still has the power and ability to turn this all around.

New FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler recently stated that the FCC must be able to protect broadband users and preserve the Internet’s fundamental open architecture. Now he has no other choice but to reassert the FCC’s clear authority over our nation’s communications infrastructure.

Will he do it? Not without a lot of political pressure—enough political pressure to counteract the onslaught of industry lobbyists (and hired guns and sketchy front groups) about to descend on his office.

But we’ve seen throughout the fight over Net Neutrality, the massive mobilization to stop the SOPA/PIPA Web censorship bills, and the public outcry against unchecked NSA surveillance that when millions of Internet users speak out, Washington will pay attention... maybe.

So is this the end of the Internet? Only if we let it be.

http://act.demandprogress.org/sign/fcc_net_neutrality

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SOPA, PIPA, CISPA and whatever the fuck came next. The companies have spent billions at this point and we've given them a good fight but we're losing ground. This isn't just an American problem, this is a fight for the very future of the Internet. We need everyone, everywhere to rise up and support net neutrality. If we lose this battle you can expect things to go downhill for everybody at an accelerated rate.

Fight. Be heard. Matter.
http://www.fightforthefuture.org/
http://internetdefenseleague.org/
https://www.eff.org/action

Since they know creating new laws wont help, they're twisting existing laws.

Clever, eh? Like an unstable virus that mutates every time a countermeasure is discovered.

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Net Neutrality remains outside of the US.

One day we're just going to cut America off completely from our internet. They can keep their shitty subscription TV internet to themselves.

Guess we'll have to buy Forkheads.se domain sometime.

Or raid the Isle of Man, and take back what was once ours?

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We'll make sure to move the servers first.
Many servers are already moving out of the US to prevent the government from doing stupid shit.

As an american here, fuck man, this place needs it's freedom back, though.

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I have a good idea...

Burn Hollywood to the fucking ground.

So thats where this judge came from? A movie set?

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The us politicians rely on sponsors, that is, rich fuckers like people in hollywood. It is because hollywood is threatening to stop sponsoring, that the US government is forced to fight internet piracy before fighting for jobs and working health systems.

Burn hollywood, and you burn the source of all that is killing the internet.

And yet Hollywood holds many of the left-wing liberals who want to see things like net neutrality upheld. Oh no, I'm not saying politicians aren't influenced by big money, they most certainly are. But the US isn't exactly the first country with corruption, nor is it the one with the most widespread use of it, as far as I know. The government is messed up. Every law, ruling, Et cetera, is a compromise taking away someone's freedom. When I heard that the FCC had been shot down on this, I was outraged. I still am. I feel taking away the freedom of major corporations so that the every man can enjoy the internet the way they want to is a fair trade. But destruction of Hollywood wouldn't change it. It might make it worse. Look at this way: The ISPs that own cable both for TV and internet service make probably most of their money off of TV, movies and such right now. Take that away. Then they have even more reason to restrict and jack up the prices of internet services, giving them a bigger interest in taking away existing freedoms with those. Plus, one of the great things about a free internet is that it allows everyone to have a voice. Most of those voices are annoying, but everyone has an equal say, in theory. To burn Hollywood as you suggest is you suppressing someone's right while you at the same time try to defend said right. Now, as I said, this ruling is an outrage against freedom and one step closer to a totalitarian state. Depending on what happens, it could be a small step or a large step, but I must say one thing. Most of the time, people argue that the US government shouldn't get as involved as it does in the affairs of the individual and businesses, and they're angry that the power for the government to do just that has been taken away. I just thought seeing it from that perspective was kind of interesting.

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The cables that run through america shouldn't even be owned by the ISPs to begin with. I'm not saying the government should take over the network, but rather, they should build their own network or something. The government should own the cables, and the ISPs should provide the service through those cables to the people. This way there wont be three major ISPs like in America that can put batshit insane prices on their services and force other ISPs to as well. (Seriously, have you seen the prices? No other country I know even reaches a 1/5 of what it costs in mmurrica, and the service is even better in these countries. In sweden you can get 100Mbps for 40$ a month. Let's compare it to the top rated American ISPs according to this top 20 list: http://www.practicalecommerce.com/artic ... -Providers
Alright, comcast has an offer of 115$ a fucking month for 105Mbps. What the fuck kind of ridiculous price is that? Let's see what 40$ a month get you in mmurica, since that's what us swedes pay for 100Mbps... Well, 50$ gets you 6Mbps in mmurrica, and that's the cheapest I could find from Comcast unless I pick some retarded offer that costs 30$ a month but which only works for 6 months, and then you're bound to some other shitty offer that costs twice the amount or more, for a year. Alright, fuck this ISP. Let's check out AT&T... 65$ a month for 45Mbps. Not even half my speed, but still costs 45% more. What does 40$ get you with AT&T? 12Mbps. That's cute, that is a little bit more than 1/10 of what I get here for the same price. I think you get my point. Fuck the American ISP Network monopoly bullshit. The cables should be owned by you, the tax payers, for the ISPs to use. No smaller ISP should have to pay another ISP to use the cables. That's fucking bullshit.

Here is another thing that sucks about US ISPs. The ISPs in Mmmurrica all seem to be fighting against piracy and to earn as much money as possible. Doesn't matter if they're left wing, right wing or whatever the fuck. If you download something illegally, you are sent a fucking letter stating that they will shut off their service to you if you do not stop. This can happen even if you were just browsing let's say Piratebay...

Meanwhile in Sweden, there are Organizations and Unions for ISPs to join only if they comply with the privacy terms of said unions. These terms being such as No government spying on customers, If mmurrica or the swedish government sends a fucking request, stating they need to acquire info of the household with a certain IP adress, they will do all in their power to make sure YOU, they customer knows this, they will stall as much as they can until they are threatened with legal action, or the time an ISP is required to keep the information runs out and they discard it, letting you and themselves get away legally. In sweden the ISPs are forced to keep the customer and IP details in a database for 6 months before they can discard it, but stalling is easy in sweden, so once they're actually forced to give out any information, that information is already gone. I'm pretty sure killing net neutrality is illegal in sweden, as it is the same as denying customers service that must be available for everyone.

The swedish government is forced by mmuurrica to take legal actions against pircay, and is why in sweden we're also dealing with shitty new laws that restrict internet usage, but the ISPs always work against it, and here is why: If they don't, they wont have any fucking customers, because they do not own the cables that run through the ground and therefore have no say in it. There are also laws in sweden stating that the government is not allowed to listen to the traffic in these cables even if they own it, so their only way to obtain information is through the ISPs, but the ISPs do not want to lose customers, so they wont tell. This shit is exactly why mmurrica needs to build a new cable network, and tell the american ISPs to go fuck themselves. Once that is done, the hollywood fuckers will show themselves.

So, a small group sets this up. Say 30$ a month for 100Mbps. What would be the outcome?

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Ok. So let me be clear on one thing. Containing Internet is as big butthurt bullshit as anonymity in it - just an illusion created by overly-cautious people.