A federal appellate court decision on Tuesday raises the prospect that Netflix Inc. and other bandwidth-hogging websites may have to pay tolls to broadband providers to ensure quality service, a change that would throw a wrench into their business models and potentially raise prices for consumers. 
 
 The ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia struck down the Federal Communications Commission's so-called "open Internet" rules that had required equal treatment of Internet traffic and... ||||| Net neutrality is dead. 
 
 At least that's the verdict of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, which today struck down a Federal Communications Commission (FCC) order from 2010 that forced Internet service providers (ISPs) like Verizon, AT&T;, Comcast and Time Warner Cable to abide by the principles of network neutrality. These principles broadly stipulate that ISP network management must be transparent, and that ISPs can't engage in practices that block, stifle or discriminate against (lawful) websites or traffic types on the Internet. 
 
 That's the bare bones story, wrapped in ugly acronyms (FCC, ISP, etc.). But why should you care that network neutrality ("net neutrality") may be gone for good? 
 
 1. No more net neutrality means ISPs can now discriminate against content they dislike. 
 
 Everyone gets their Internet from an Internet service provider -- an ISP like AT&T;, Verizon, Comcast or Time Warner Cable. Under net neutrality rules, these ISPs have to treat all content you access over the Internet "roughly the same way" -- they can't speed up traffic from websites they like or delay competitor's traffic. 
 
 Now, with net neutrality gone, ISPs can discriminate, favoring their business partners while delaying or blocking websites they don't like. Think your cable CEO hates free online porn? Now you'll know for sure! 
 
 2. No more net neutrality means ISPs can now force websites to PAY for faster content delivery. 
 
 You know how some sites you go to just load slower than others? Usually, that's just because the slower site is image heavy, poorly coded, or dealing with intense server load. But with net neutrality gone, ISPs can now start charging hefty fees to websites that want quick content delivery -- shifting the long load times to poorer sites that can't pay up. 
 
 Prefer indie retailers to Amazon.com? You may be in for a frustrating future. 
 
 3. Destroying net neutrality is bad for small businesses. 
 
 Put together items one and two and it becomes clear -- negating net neutrality is bad for small businesses. If ISPs force website owners pay for faster load times, tiny retailers and personal websites will be the ones to suffer from slower content delivery. 
 
 Alternately -- or additionally -- ISPs will have no reason not to favor partner sites: Comcast, for instance, might favor the website of NBC News (which it owns) over competing outlets like Fox or CNN. Still, it's the indies again that will lose out here. While big sites might either get special treatment from their owners or have the means to pay in order to get placed in a bundle, smaller, independent networks won't get any notice from ISPs. Expand this out to music sites, web publishing, etc., and you begin to see the problem. 
 
 In extreme cases, ISPs may hinder or block content that isn't produced by partners -- much like AT&T; did when it owned the telephone networks back in the day. 
 
 4. Without net neutrality, entire types of online traffic (like Netflix) may be in jeopardy. 
 
 Netflix watchers and BitTorrent users might want to beware -- soon your beloved services may not work like they used to. Now that net neutrality's down for the count, ISPs can discriminate against entire types of traffic: For instance, an ISP could slow or block all peer-to-peer file sharing, or all online video streaming. 
 
 Think it sounds unbelievably stupid for an ISP to stifle a certain traffic types indiscriminately? Comcast has seen reason to stifle both streaming video and peer-to-peer in the past. 
 
 From an ISP's perspective, discriminating against some traffic types makes business sense: Many ISPs are also cable television providers, which means the "cord-cutting" enabled by peer-to-peer and streaming online video isn't good for their bottom line. 
 
 5. Without net neutrality, your ISPs can make even more money without actually improving the Internet. 
 
 Right now, America's broadband is slow. It's slow because ISPs can already make gobs of money by charging the rich a ton for high-quality Internet while leaving the rest of America with subpar (or no) service. 
 
 Now, with net neutrality gone, ISPs will be able to make even more money off their existing customer base. They won't need to improve service or bring broadband to rural areas because they'll be able to keep growing (financially, at least) by charging content providers more for faster delivery and charging customers more for faster access. In all likelihood, Tuesday's ruling means the problems with America's Internet will be magnified. 
 
 Clarification: A previous hypothetical scenario in this article implied Time Warner Corporation still owned Time Warner Cable, which was spun off in 2009. The example has been changed. ||||| If you like how cable television works, you're going to love how a court decision Tuesday could change the Internet. 
 
 Thanks to the ruling, broadband providers can now exert a lot more control over what sites you visit on the Internet and what services you can access. The decision would allow Comcast, for example, to bar its Internet subscribers from seeing videos from Netflix (NFLX) or from using Vonage's Internet phone service. 
 
 In a decision that could reshape consumers' access to entertainment, news and other online content, a federal appeals court Tuesday set aside Federal Communications Commission rules designed to ensure that transmission of all Internet content be treated equally. (Paul Sakuma/AP file photo) 
 
 Made by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, the decision overturned rules put in place by the Federal Communications Commission in 2010 that barred wired Internet providers from blocking access to particular sites or services, and generally required them to treat all Internet traffic equally. 
 
 While the court's ruling will worry and anger advocates of an open Internet, it's federal regulators, not the judges, who are to blame. Their subservience to the big telecommunications companies and timidity in writing the rules governing Internet traffic led directly to the court's decision. 
 
 Advertisement 
 
 One thing that has made the Internet distinct from pay television services is the role of the service provider. With pay TV, the cable or satellite company determines what channels you can watch, which often depends on what kind of financial deals the providers can strike with the channel operators. As subscribers have seen, disputes over who should pay what can lead to channels or programs going off the air. 
 
 Since its founding, the Internet has operated differently, at least in this country. The understanding -- underwritten by certain legal precedents -- was that end users should be able to connect to any site or service attached to the network, not just those that their broadband service provider approves. There's also long been a generally understood principle that all Internet providers should treat the bits that pass through their networks more or less the same; that you should be able to access video from Netflix as easily as video from Comcast -- or even video on your Aunt Edna's website. 
 
 But in recent years, this principle, dubbed "network neutrality," has been challenged by the service providers. Most notoriously, Comcast inhibited some of its customers from using file-sharing applications by deliberately slowing access to those services. 
 
 In response to those challenges, the FCC, which regulates telecommunications services in this country, put in place its Open Internet rules, which sought to explicitly codify the principles of net neutrality. 
 
 But the FCC made what turns out to have been a big mistake. As the appeals court noted in its ruling, the Open Internet rules essentially require the broadband providers to act as "common carriers," a class of highly regulated companies that are required to treat all customers the same. Unfortunately, the FCC determined long ago that the providers weren't common carriers. 
 
 Under the Bush administration, the FCC was determined to deregulate the telecommunications industry. As part of that effort, it reversed its previous stance and removed Internet providers from common carrier regulations. But even as it deregulated the industry, the FCC sought to maintain the notion of net neutrality. Unfortunately, by determining that the broadband providers weren't common carriers, it basically took away from itself the legal authority to enforce that notion. That's what the court ruled Tuesday: that the FCC can't impose common carrier rules on companies that aren't common carriers. 
 
 There are, of course, answers to this problem. One is that the U.S. Supreme Court could overrule the appeals court if the FCC appeals the ruling. The other is that the FCC could reclassify the broadband providers and give itself back the authority to regulate them. 
 
 But you can bet it will face a lot of resistance to doing so. Back when the agency was debating the Open Internet rules, consumer groups urged the FCC to ground those rules in the finding that the broadband providers are in fact common carriers. But that proposal met considerable resistance from the big telecommunications companies and from those companies' champions in Congress. The final rules were an attempt by the agency to appease both sides. 
 
 The agency may find the gumption this time to tick off the telecommunications giants by re-regulating them. But I wouldn't bet on it. I think it's much more likely that the agency, which is now headed by a former industry lobbyist, will capitulate. 
 
 So enjoy accessing your Internet videos from Netflix and Aunt Edna. They may not be so easy to watch in the future -- if you can watch them at all. 
 
 Contact Troy Wolverton at 408-840-4285 or twolverton@mercurynews.com. Follow him at www.mercurynews.com/troy-wolverton or Twitter.com/troywolv. ||||| Those comments were made with today's decision looming in the distance. "We are concerned about the two-sided market," pro-net-neutrality group Free Press told BuzzFeed at the time. Brent Skorup of the libertarian Mercatus Center at George Mason University, representing the other side of the issue, said that Wheeler was "a little more industry friendly" than his predecessor. 
 
 This comes just a few weeks after the new chairman of the FCC, Tom Wheeler, a former lobbyist for the telecom industry, startled net neutrality advocates with this quote, given during a Q&A following his first formal public address: 
 
 Today, vital portions of the FCC's Open Internet rules were struck down in federal court. These rules, put in place in 2010, were designed to preserve what advocates call net neutrality — an assurance that internet providers can't favor one kind of traffic over another, or charge for access to certain parts of the internet. All traffic, according to the rules, was to be treated equally. Verizon challenged these rules, and mostly won. 
 
 It's an intoxicating pitch, and one you'll hear soon. The country's largest data providers are mulling it; their partners are figuring out how to make it work; the FCC, which is in charge of identifying downsides and regulating such things, just lost much of its ability to do so. Caught at the whirling nexus of theory and regulation and commerce, the average internet user's fate is uncertain. But today, a new and unexpected possibility has made itself clear: We may be entering the era of sponsored data — the era of an internet that we don't directly pay for, but that we also don't control. It's the old net neutrality nightmare, in other words, disguised as a gift. 
 
 What if you didn't have to pay for your data plan? What if the biggest data hogs on your phone — your music apps, your streaming video apps — didn't count toward your monthly limit? 
 
 For years, the net neutrality nightmare scenario was as follows: Carriers, such as Comcast, could charge different amounts for access to different tiers of the internet. The basic tier might include email and basic browsing; the next could include Facebook and Twitter; the final tier could include Netflix, YouTube, or Spotify. These tiers would be divided not by bandwidth or speed requirements, but by content type . The internet would become a club with various VIP sections, arbitrarily laid out to benefit internet providers. 
 
 The FCC chairman's own statement, while suggesting he is weighing an appeal, was cold comfort to his predecessor's allies. "I am committed to maintaining our networks as engines for economic growth, test beds for innovative services and products, and channels for all forms of speech protected by the First Amendment." 
 
 "Pretty much everybody in the industry pushed back very hard against it," he said. "There were a lot of people who came around to network neutrality — a reason why these rules were compromised, and had industry buy-in, was that a lot of people in the industry preferred these rules to reclassification." This is a potentially crippling defeat for net neutrality advocates. Trying to reclassify ISPs as utilities, essentially, would give anti-regulation opponents a much clearer position. Wayne Crews of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, which opposes net neutrality, declared victory in a statement, saying the cause is "dead and buried." 
 
 By "treating broadband like a communications service," Free Press is suggesting categorizing internet providers as "common carriers," like phone companies, a possibility that, in comparison to preserving 2010's stricken FCC rules, is seen by insiders as a long shot. "From a legal perspective, it's easier," Harold Feld, a senior vice president at Public Knowledge, told BuzzFeed. "What makes it difficult is the politics." 
 
 "This ruling means there is no one who can protect us from ISPs that block or discriminate against websites, applications or services," says a statement from the organization. Tell the FCC to start treating broadband like a communications service, and to restore its Net Neutrality rules." 
 
 This was the vision that propelled net neutrality into the public consciousness, and that led to its inclusion in Barack Obama's 2008 platform. Since then, the nightmare scenario has evolved, with the help of wireless providers. It became more subtle but no less insidious to net neutrality advocates; rather than charging users more for access to different parts of the internet, carriers would charge content providers to make sure their content worked well. The fears changed: Now it wasn't just users that were at risk, but upstart companies. Facebook might be able to afford preferential treatment. But what about the startup that wants to replace Facebook? This is the kind of behavior that Verizon, and others, won the right to engage in today, and it's more likely than ever to come to pass. "We're going to see more pushing of the envelope," Feld says. "Look, you know, Verizon said that if it weren't for these rules, we'd be out negotiating all kinds of deals for [preferential] access." In a statement today, Verizon assured customers that it wouldn't block content, but left open the possibility of preferential access on the service side. 
 
 In the last year, a third, equally insidious but even more subtle scenario has emerged, and today became a much realer possibility. On a less regulated internet, content providers — websites and services — might be able to pay for their users' data. Here's how AT&T describes its "Sponsored Data" plans: 
 
 Similar to 1-800 phone numbers or free shipping for internet commerce, AT&T's new 'Sponsored Data' service opens up new data use options for AT&T wireless customers and customer-friendly mobile broadband channels to businesses that choose to participate as sponsors… 
 
 
 
 With the new Sponsored Data service, data charges resulting from eligible uses will be billed directly to the sponsoring company; the customer simply enjoys their content via AT&T's wireless data network. Customers will see the service offered as AT&T Sponsored Data, and the usage will appear on their monthly invoice as Sponsored Data. 
 
 If you wanted to access the internet 15 years ago, you would sign up for a service plan with a company like AOL. For a fee — maybe $20, $30, $40 — you would get as much monthly access as you could use, more or less. Five years later, you would have made a similar arrangement with your cable or phone company for broadband access. Five years after that, you would still have a broadband connection, but you could also enter a new contract, this time with your cell phone company: For a monthly fee, you would get access to the entire internet from your smartphone. Your service might be tiered by speed or data allowances, but it has always been a pure pipe to the internet. How you use your bits has been up to you. 
 
 Sponsored data attacks the only major unappealing part of this long-standing tradition: its cost. It proposes the possibility that video sites, music sites, and social networking sites could pay for their users' access. It also poses a more fundamental question: If all your favorite services didn't count toward your phone's data plan, why would you bother having a data plan at all? 
 
 Recasting internet access as a subsidiary of internet services is not a familiar idea, but it's arriving in many forms. In fact, in the developing world, Facebook has been operating such a service for some time. Facebook for Every Phone, through deals with carriers, provides access to basic Facebook services and apps for free. Facebook isn't just subsidizing some internet experiences, here — it's subsidizing users' very first internet experiences. "It's like the early days of broadcast television," Feld says, "where you would pay affiliates to carry your programming." 
 
 The appeal of such an arrangement to a regular customer is obvious: you would pay less for your data, at least directly. "Consumers don't like it when you take things away," says Feld, so "carriers need to be more subtle than that." They will do so primarily, he says, by creating "artificial scarcity" — data caps — and requiring customers, or now, internet companies, to buy their way around them. 
 
 The appeal of the latter arrangement to the internet's largest companies is even more obvious: It would give them unprecedented control over the internet and its users. If, in this future, you're choosing between two streaming music services, and one of them pays for your data, there's a very good chance you're going to pick that one. 
 
 But which one would be able to do that? The largest one, the incumbent. "This will have profound implications for the internet's ecology," says Feld. Worse, he worries, companies that were willing to fight for net neutrality in the old days won't be such strong allies in 2014, now that they are the largest incumbents on the internet. "They're big, and they can negotiate," he says. "Once you're on the inside, exclusion doesn't seem like such a bad thing. If you're Google, maybe getting access for YouTube is what you want, rather than what you want to fight."
– Yesterday was the day net neutrality died, with a court ruling that Internet service providers aren't bound by FCC non-discrimination rules—so they can prioritize some traffic over others. The decision may mean major changes for the everyday user, and today, media sites are offering the details. Among their warnings: The Wall Street Journal reports that the decision could have a huge impact on sites like Netflix and YouTube, whose video services hog a lot of bandwidth (they account for 32% and 19% of peak web traffic, respectively). If ISPs start making Netflix, for instance, pay a usage fee to maintain speedy content delivery, that cost could make a serious dent in its profits—or trickle down to consumers. ISPs could charge sites big fees in exchange for faster content delivery, potentially giving giants who can pay, like Amazon, a big leg up over independent retailers—not to mention other small businesses, the Huffington Post notes. Providers might even go so far as to prioritize traffic to partner sites—Time Warner might push CNN, for example. Another anti-competitive fear, via BuzzFeed: Big companies might start paying your data fees for the use of their sites. That might sound good—free data?—but it would mean that companies with the ability to pay would have a major advantage over start-ups in winning users. As BuzzFeed points out, "If, in this future, you're choosing between two streaming music services, and one of them pays for your data, there's a very good chance you’re going to pick that one." Beyond concerns over fees, there are worries that providers could block certain websites completely: Comcast users could theoretically end up with no access to, say, Netflix or Vonage, writes Troy Wolverton in the San Jose Mercury News. But net neutrality, in some form, may live to see another day, the Journal notes, reporting that the ruling "left open the door for the FCC to craft rules in a different form that might accomplish its earlier intentions."