Welcome to the Internet's new toll lane

[Commentary] There are lots of reasons to be dismayed by the recent appeals court ruling striking down the Federal Communications Commission's Open Internet rules. But one of the most upsetting aspects about it is how it now gives Internet service providers all the latitude they need to charge more for whatever services they deem to be deserving of a premium cost.

The ruling could encourage more thorny tie-ups between ISPs and service providers. One of the promises of the Internet as a level playing field for content delivery was that end-users wouldn't need to buy $120-a-month cable packages, all for the sake of watching a few channels they could in theory get delivered digitally from a website anyway. Granting ISPs a free hand to create these kinds of preferential bargain bundles would undo all that. The ruling could also bode poorly for developers of as-yet-unveiled competing services, who could find themselves preemptively locked out of competing for consumer attention. ISPs can ultimately construct any arguments they feel like for what content gets a pass and what content doesn't. It wouldn't have to be limited to video, either: it could be streaming music providers, social networks, photo or video services, or anything else ISPs can argue imposes a drain on their network resources. That's what's most unpleasant about this ruling. It doesn't destroy everything in one swoop, but rather leaves open a door for first one kind of neutrality, then another, then another, to be constricted in turn.