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....
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.
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.
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.
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.
So it's 100% certain that the only real, long term solution is to enable real competition. Probably most would agree with that.
However, given the infrastructure demands, that's very hard (but possible) and will take a long time. We should push for it clearly, but we need something in between.
Given that most people have only 2, maybe 3 available providers, we need the government to intervene in the mean time to enforce net neutrality. It's a stopgap measure to be sure, but it's a necessary one.
Government regulating natural monopolies in the interest of the consumer is pretty common and relatively effective.
That's true, but in that case our alternative is to have a monopolistic broandband provider in each area with the ability to discriminate against traffic/websites.
The stopgap solution, even if left in place permanently with no further progress, is far better than that.
It's far better to address the root of the problem rather than just treating the symptoms on the surface.
The symptoms on the surface are that monopolistic broandband providers discriminate against traffic or websites.
The root of the problem is that there are monopolistic broandband providers rather than a competitive free market.
Why are there monopolistic broandband providers? Where do we get our Internet from? Generally, either DSL or Cable. DSL comes via the children of another monopolistic (or at least oligopolistic) industry: telecom. And cable comes via yet another monopolistic (or at least oligopolistic) industry: cable television. Monopoly breeds monopoly, ever expanding into new industries to monopolize, more often with the government's blessings than not.
But we're in a system where addressing the root problem isn't going to happen any time soon (and is way beyond the purview of the FCC) and without a stopgap measure we'll have nothing. We'll have a broadband oligarchy able to charge Google to be delivered to customers while Yahoo isn't.
We should fix the root problem, but in the mean time a stopgap is necessary to ensure the web's economic viability. Without that we risk falling behind the rest of the world. It's too idealistic and impractical to wait.
What problem is worse than monopolistic broadband providers being able to sell favor to anyone with a web presence? That seems like it would jeopardize the entire future of our information economy.
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.
... 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.
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....