"The US Court of Appeals ruled in favor of Comcast today, stating that the FCC lacks the authority to require broadband providers to give equal treatment to all Internet traffic flowing over their networks."
This sets a dangerous precedent for major ISP’s to control and shape the traffic of the Internet. On a more extreme level it could allow for content providers such as MSN to offer cash to say Comcast to throttle or redirect traffic in favor of MSN. Imagine you want to go to Google to search but your provider decides that the traffic should be routed to MSN instead. It could get a little more nefarious than that if the ISP was paid to throttle the traffic, so that when you tried to visit you favorite site you noticed that it was slow to respond, but in visiting a competitor you were able to surf at your normal broadband speeds.
This kind of precedent also leaves the door open for traffic shaping. When you paid for your Internet connection it was probably with the understanding that you could use that connection for any legal purpose in any way that you pleased. If ISPs are allowed to traffic shape they can effectively decide what and when you can do with your Internet connection that you pay for. At any point they can institute policies that limit watching videos or listening to music online.
The most extreme cases of this involve sanctioned censorship. If this is allowed to continue special interest groups that want to tell you what information you can consume and want to strip away your freedoms by deciding what is best for you can pay off the ISPs to block access to legitimate content.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_neutrality
http://www.savetheinternet.com/
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