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.

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.