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The Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled that the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) didn’t have the authority to prohibit Internet service providers to block or even slow down web traffic and applications in a selective manner. This represents a rejection of Net Neutrality, which required in particular to broadband connections operators not to discriminate Internet traffic.

It’s not the first time that the concept of Net Neutrality is challenged in a court of law. Already in 2010, Comcast obtained a judgment against it. In that case, the FCC changed the rules reclassifying telecommunications services as Internet services.

U.S. President Barack Obama has always supported Net Neutrality, believing too dangerous to give ISPs freedom to decide whether to slow down or even stop the traffic to and from certain services. Now, after this new ruling arrived after Verizon went to court, ISPs will be allowed to block contents that for some reason don’t like, such as traffic to and from an operator providing a competing service.

The issue is very delicate and the consequences are yet to be assessed. First of all, we need to see how the FCC will react. There may be an appeal to the Supreme Court or the rules will be changed in such a way as to comply to the terms established by the ruling.

If at the end ISPs were left the ability to filter traffic according to their convenience, for example they could demand to be paid for services such as streaming to broadcast them to their users. Obviously, this would ultimately lead to higher costs for users.

Until there’s some certainty in new rules, there’s also the risk that many companies operating on the Internet block their investments slowing down innovation. In recent years, the Internet has been a major engine of growth, also economic, one of the few to go forward through years of heavy crisis. Crippling the Internet would be disastrous.

This ruling is binding in the U.S.A. while other countries have their own laws. However, it’s inevitable that major changes taking place in the U.S.A. heavily influence the rest of the world. Many people use American services from other nations so the consequences could be felt at the international level. We must hope that this is not the beginning of an era in which we will have to pay each service we use.