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Congressman Tells Comcast, Hands Off BitTorrent
An anonymous reader writes "Just a few months back, the Net Neutrality debate was all but dead. Luckily for fans of a free Internet, the telcos are their own worst enemies. Recent stories involving Verizon Wireless blocking pro-choice groups, AT&T censoring Pearl Jam's anti-war comments from a streaming concert, and most recently, Comcast finally admitting to using anti-BitTorrent filters. The Net Neutrality debate would appear to be alive and kicking, with Congressman Rick Boucher (D-VA) being the first politician to make a public statement sharply criticizing Comcast's actions."
Congressman Boucher rocks. He actually does a great job of getting things done for everyone. It doesn't hurt that he is all about technology either. He's probably the main force driving broadband adoption in Southwest Virginia (my home). Some the most recent things he's helped get accomplished are a major fiber optic pipe to Lebanon, VA (it's slowly making it's way to my small town), that pipe has convinced at least two global companies to set up shop in Southwest VA. Northrop Grumman being one and CGI-AMS being the other. He does such a great job and is liked so much that I don't think he has even had anyone oppose him in the election for the past several years. And if someone has opposed him, he won by such a margin that they might as well have not shown up. (This is me talking, I'm too lazy to look up any stats, so what I just said could be completely wrong. But, he rocks so much, it doesn't matter. Watch out Chuck Norris?)
Completely blocking an entire protocol isn't QoS, Qos is about giving priority to certain types of traffic that need lower latency or more bandwidth, an example would be VoIP which needs low latency to not become useless.
What Comcast has been doing is outright blocking an entire protocol, sort of like how some ISPs block their users' ability to use SMTP, mostly outbound but in some cases inbound as well. The difference being that there is a good reason to block outbound SMTP, it may be a PITA for those trying to run their own mail server but at least the reason isn't so much direct greed as it is to protect the network at large from zombie machines trying to spam the rest of the net...
/Mikael
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
Boucher was also one of the most vocal opponents of Clinton's impeachment, and has also been on record criticizing the excesses DMCA as well. He's one of the few congressmen that I'm actually glad is in in office.
Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the war room!
you can get debtorrent for that i believe.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
Comcast has politely reminded this wayward congressman that in America laws are paid for by bribes. Comcast then offered the congressman a "campaign contribution", silencing his dissent. The system works.
That is why F.C.C. rules should be changed to ban paid-for political ads on radio, tv, satellite and cable.
They should bring back the old rules where broadcasters commit on their license/renewal applications to a minimum amount of public affairs programming (which could included free political time) and limits on the maximum number of commercial minutesper hour. Broadcasters could pick their own numbers, but could be at a disadvantage at renewal time if a competing applicant wants to do more to serve the community.
What I suggest is not a restriction on free speech, only a restriction on what broadcasters can accept payment for.
Most of the corruption we see with our politicians relates to them selling out to obtain money for campaigns. Eliminating money from the picture for radio and tv would certainly lessen the need to raise money for campaigns.
We should go back to earlier much more restrictive rules on how many stations a licensee could own. I think we should go beyond that and require that some specified percentage (perhaps increasing over time) of stations in a region have licensees that live in the city-grade coverage area of their station. Having local licensees would go a long ways towards making broadcasters more responsive to serving the needs of their local communities.
Having a free and diverse press and broadcasters and a free flow of information is essential for democracy to function properly. We should not allow any corporate or special interest groups to own a sizeable chunk of our broadcast stations. These stations are supposed to be trustees of the public interest, not just cash cows for large companies.