Net Neutrality Under Attack: The Facts

An appeals court in Washington has ruled that the FCC doesn’t have the authority to prevent companies such as Verizon from charging services such as Netflix for preferential access to broadband pipes — a decision that deals a blow to net neutrality, the concept that all parties should have equal, open access to the communications medium that is the Internet, whether they have big bucks or not. Gigaom’s Mathew Ingram has an excellent explainer on what it means, weaving together snippets and tweets from an array of observers. Executive summary: The decision is very bad news for everyone except companies such as AT&T and Verizon, but it’s also not the last word on this matter.