

FCC Votes 3-2 to Punish Comcast for Interfering with BitTorrent - dominik
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/08/fcc-rules-against-comcast-bit-torrent-blocking

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iigs
From the link:

 _There is one aspect of Friday's FCC ruling, however, that seriously troubles
us. Consider how the FCC got here. In 2005, without any authority or guidance
from Congress, the FCC announced a "policy statement." Now, in 2008, it
decided that it has the power to enforce the policy statement and announced an
"enforcement framework" that will be applied to future complaints. Again, all
this without authority or guidance from Congress. As Commissioner McDowell put
it in his dissent from the Comcast order, "Under the analysis set forth in the
order, the Commission apparently can do anything [to regulate the Internet] so
long as it frames its actions in terms of promoting the Internet or broadband
deployment." Can the FCC be trusted with that kind of power? Remember,
historically, the FCC has been subject to "regulatory capture" -- in other
words, over time, they end up doing the bidding of the very telecom giants
they are supposed to be regulating._

Way to establish precedent, guys. :/

From the FCC's press release (PDF linked inside eff.org page):

 _Ruling on a complaint by Free Press and Public Knowledge as well as a
petition for declaratory ruling, the Commission concluded that Comcast has
unduly interfered with Internet users’ right to access the lawful Internet
content and to use the applications of their choice. Specifically, the
Commission found that Comcast had deployed equipment throughout its network to
monitor the content of its customers’ Internet connections and selectively
block specific types of connections known as peer-to-peer connections._

I'm concerned that this gives AT&T, et al. everything they need to effectively
lobby the branches of government that _should_ be making laws of this type and
say "See! This Network Neutrality thing is preventing us from managing our
bandwidth and saving us (and our customers) money!"

I'm not very comfortable with this ruling in that regard.

Disclosure: I have a financial interest such as employment, contracting or
stock in a company that is involved with the technology in question.
Unfortunately I am not comfortable revealing who or what the relationship is
because they're not public about their role in this matter.

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nuclear_eclipse
I for one, welcome our new Comcast-punishing FCC overlords.

Wait, I got that wrong: I _greatly fear_ putting the FCC in charge of
regulating ISP's, with the fantastically-awful job they are doing with regards
to the telecom and television markets. Wolf-in-sheep's-clothing comes to
mind....

~~~
stcredzero
Right. So a lack of real competition enables abuses by corporate behemoths.
Solution? Bring in the government behemoth.

What about enabling real competition?

~~~
LogicHoleFlaw
I think the best way to encourage real competition is to decouple
infrastructure maintenance from service provisioning. The internet
infrastructure is a natural physical monopoly which doesn't make sense to
duplicate several times over. But the current impracticality of having
multiple service providers over common pipes sets up the abusive
monopolization we are currently seeing. Unfortunately the behemoths seem
content with the status quo of commingling those two businesses.

We're caught between the wolf and the bear, and I don't see a good way out.
Seeing the FCC make a strong move to protect Net neutrality is heartening, but
seeing them make a unilateral decision to assume more regulatory power makes
me nervous. I really don't want to see the FCC start making decisions about
content in addition to decisions about technical implementations. Regulate the
frequencies, not the airwaves.

~~~
mattmaroon
I don't see the FCC stretching for that yet. They've made no overtures toward
censorship, in fact, this move is fairly anti-censorship, as it essentially
prevents ISPs from engaging in that.

The FCC has generally regulated content transmitted over public airwaves. And
while I personally disagree with even that, they don't interfere much with
stuff that comes over cables.

~~~
LogicHoleFlaw
The FCC (and to some extent, Congress) has been making overtures towards
granting itself power to regulate content on the private Cable networks for
some years now. I'm wary of any censorship, so it's one of the things I have
to bring up when looking at the FCC's new rulings here.

~~~
mattmaroon
That may be true, but this in particular doesn't seem to be any attempt at
censorship (in fact it's the opposite) and we can't just throw the baby out
with the bathwater.

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dominik
I think the best quote in the article is: "[A] polar bear makes a great
bodyguard, until it decides to eat you."

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richcollins
I punished them by canceling my service. Why do we need to get the FCC
involved?

~~~
nuclear_eclipse
... because 90% (or more) of their customers don't even _know_ that Comcast
has done anything wrong, let alone has the real ability to understand the
consequences of what they've done or why it should stop.

