Politics, bittorrent, comcast, fcc, file sharing, kevin martin

FCC chair to Comcast: Stop lying about file sharing

At a Congressional hearing, Comcast executives said the company needs to filter some traffic to keep the flow of data constant on its networks — like blocking BitTorrent file-sharing, as it was caught doing last fall. Federal Communications Commission head Kevin Martin is having none of it. "I think it's important to understand that the commission is ready, willing and able to step in if necessary to correct any (unreasonable) practices that are ongoing today," he said today. Martin wants Internet service providers to be more "transparent." Network operators have the right to manage data traffic, but that "does not mean they can arbitrarily block access to particular applications or services," he added. Translation? If you're going to block file sharing, stop lying about it.

2:40 PM on Mon Feb 25 2008
By Jordan Golson
1,256 views
5 comments

Comments

jterhorst at 04:49 PM on 02/25/08
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Whoo! Go FCC! You rock!

Keep kicking Comcast in the balls. That's awesome.
Papa Midnight at 05:23 PM on 02/25/08
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They do? Far as I'm concerned, the FCC has no balls. If they did, we'd have open line access at wholesale prices (see: Japan), we'd have better competition, and I'd have more internet access options in my neighborhood than Comcast or My neighbor's wi-fi.
WagCurious at 05:48 PM on 02/25/08
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Connectedness Index: 114
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@Papa Midnight: You got that right. This was all just for show. The FCC is absolutely on the side of the network owners (they literally could care less about the network users). Look at what they did to the ISP market. Back in August 2006 the commission decided that telcos didn't have to share their trunks with ISPs (like Earthlink). Now, the few remaining ISPs are on a deathwatch.

Next, the commission gave AT&T everything it wanted in regard to video franchising without extracting anything of consequence. Network owners can literally do whatever they want, so long as they don't do anything stupid (and raise the public's attention, as Comcast has done).

Many network owners have been publicly saying they plan to "shape" traffic. And the VERY first traffic type they plan to "shape" out of existence is VOIP. That is the app they REALLY want to block (as it cuts into core revenue). This is really just a trial balloon to see how sleepy the public is. If they are allowed to get away with this the next target will be VOIP.
jamar0303 at 05:08 AM on 02/26/08
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@WagCurious: This is exactly why we need to do something about the FCC. Dunno where to start, though. Depending how bad this gets I may just move out of the country (Japan does sound real good right about now...)
jamar0303 at 05:11 AM on 02/26/08
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@jamar0303: That or Japan could point their newly-launched internet satellite in the general direction of North America...