Net Neutrality Gutted by Federal Appeals Court

For the past 20 years, net neutrality has been a cause célèbre among digital activists. The principle that ISPs should not grant priority access to favored sites and services has attracted wide support among internet users, but net neutrality supporters have been handed a crushing defeat. A US appeals court has cited recent Supreme Court rulings to block the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) from enforcing net neutrality rules.

The FCC first implemented net neutrality during the Obama administration, requiring ISPs to treat all traffic coming across their networks equally. The regulations aimed to ensure that sprawling internet firms could not create paid prioritization plans for websites or charge consumers more for accessing certain types of data. The industry balked, claiming such rules would make traffic management and innovation more difficult.

This began a back and forth as legal challenges supported or reinforced neutrality rules, but that changed when Trump's ...