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FCC Seeks Comment In Comcast P2P Investigation
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "The FCC has officially opened proceedings investigating Comcast's use of Sandvine to send RST packets and 'throttle' P2P connections by disconnecting them. The petitioner, Vuze, Inc. is asking the FCC to rule that Comcast's measures do not constitute 'reasonable network management' per the FCC rules and to forbid Comcast from unreasonably discriminating against lawful Internet applications, content, and technologies. If you want to weigh in on these proceedings, you can use the Electronic Comment Filing System to comment on WC Docket no. 07-52 any time before February 13th."
Posting the link to the public comment filing system was an excellent decision. The problem with these "Public" comment periods is that there are very minimal requirements for advertising the opportunity to comment, and too often the only people who know about it are the parties actually involved in the litigation. Slashdot users are (often) some of the most well-informed and affected members of the community with regards to technology issues, and Slashdot editors ought to ensure that they include information about opportunities to make public comments on ongoing regulatory issues whenever possible.
I tried. For some reason I lose my connection to the FCC after only a few seconds...
For those interested, Vuze Inc. is made up of the developers of Azureus, the open source bit torrent client. These guys obviously have a stake in what's going on because their newer app, Vuze, has deals with some media organizations to serve their content via P2P.
Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
When I though about this, though I got a sense of Deja Vu. I can't remember the particulars, but wasn't there a similar controversy back when people first started using modems over their phone lines? I seem to remember the telcos rasing a stink and saying something like "this was not what the phone lines were intended for, it's eating up too much of our resources" or something to that effect and threatening to sanction or even cut off heavy modem users. Of course, we know how that one turned out, but can you imagine what the world would look like today if they had followed through, cracking down on modem use and crippling the internet before it even got started?
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
FCC Seeks Comment In Comcast P2P Investigation
Why, so they can ignore it again?
The public who understands it, opposes it. The rest of the public has no clue what they even asked (though would oppose it if they did). And the FCC will still side with the three comments from guys like Rupert Murdoch.
I actually looked up some of the comments filed so far and it looks like the FCC needs to employ a spam filter of some sort.
Apparently the FCC is in need of purchasing some new life insurance: Submitted Comment
They also need to buy some new cell phones from Hong Kong!: Submitted Comment
Luckily, there are a few good comments such as this set of form letters (read: petition) found here: Submitted Comment
Ok, there are a few good comments there at least, I like this Rome analogy here: Submitted Comment
"To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield." - Tennyson