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Comcast Says FCC Powerless to Stop P2P Blocking
Nanoboy writes "Even if the FCC finds that Comcast has violated its Internet Policy Statement, it's utterly powerless to do anything about it, according to a recent filing by the cable giant. Comcast argues that Congress has not given the FCC the authority to act, that the Internet Policy Statement doesn't give it the right to deal with the issue, and that any FCC action would violate the Administrative Procedures Act of 1946. '"The congressional policy and agency practice of relying on the marketplace instead of regulation to maximize consumer welfare has been proven by experience (including the Comcast customer experience) to be enormously successful," concludes Comcast VP David L. Cohen's thinly-veiled warning to the FCC, filed on March 11. "Bearing these facts in mind should obviate the need for the Commission to test its legal authority."'"
Damn corporations always find a lookhole to continue exploiting their customers.... (fp?)
First of all, Comcast doesn't decide how to interpret the laws. Judges do.
Second of all, the FCC has been using powers that they weren't directly given (given through court cases that interpreted the laws as giving them such authority) for years, what makes Comcast think this will change for them?
Now, I sympathize with Comcast. Many ISPs, not just Comcast, are disrupting P2P sessions, and these sessions are in clear violation of most ISP's Terms of Service. And P2P is horribly disruptive, a single user can easily transmit 20 GB of data in a day.
Yet Comcast seems intent on making people WANT to regulate them. Its like they are deliberately behaving stupid?
They aren't agressive at pointing out all the other ISPs, to get the heat off.
They do stupid things like pack FCC hearing, say that the results won't matter, etc.
Who's running that place?
Test your net with Netalyzr
Isn't this the same Comcast which runs cable service in markets which usually has a local government-granted monopoly for cable service in those regions? Funny that now they want to say "let the market decide" when cable companies generally won't invest in the infrastructure unless granted a monopoly on providing cable service. I'm remembering back a long time - perhaps this isn't the case any more. If broadband options were available everywhere, I'd certainly say "let the market decide" - many people (myself included) only have one option for broadband, and it's often cable.
creation science book
...Car thieves have declared the police have no legal authority to prevent them from stealing cars.
Good luck with that.
I don't really understand what Comcast hopes to get out of such an "above the law" argument. It's just bound to piss off the FCC regulators even more and make them more committed to enforcing whatever decision they make against Comcast. Just to show all the other cable companies and telcos that they aren't to be messed with.
It breaks my pluginses, my precious!
Yeah, right. Which is why US broadband penetration continues to rank lower and lower worldwide despite $200 Billion from the government. And people are protesting traffic filtering. And your company is so afraid of actual people sitting at an FCC public hearing that they pay people to hold seats for employees, busing the employees in, and locking the public out from the meeting.
What Comcast is doing with the sandvine filtering is forging packets. That's fraud.
Other than that, yeah, the internet will be just like China's. I'm glad someone's finally had the balls to stand up and make an erroneous, inflammatory and completely unique critique of the state of freedom in the US.
Comcast's "marketplace" justification doesn't work. Their implication is that having a market means you have competition. But Comcast has a licensed monopoly on the cable network, and some telephone company has a monopoly on the telephone network. That's a market with, at the very most, one competitor.
Now if only FiOS was available in my area.
Let's see, according to the law, corporations are people, right? Do you think we could have comcast declared mentally incompetent?
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They gave up their rights to rely on the marketplace when they signed on to government-endorsed monopoly status.
I would have absolutely NO qualms about allowing the marketplace to sort this out - unfortunately, the marketplace is artificially sparse.
If a power company with government-mandated monopoly was blocking power to your electric oven because it sucked down too much juice and you ran it all the time, the government would get involved.
If an internet company with government-mandated monopoly blocks bits to a piece of software because it uses too much bandwidth, the regluatory body (FCC) should get involved.
That's how it should work. If you want the government to keep you in power, you gotta make sure your services don't fuck people over. If you don't like it, have fun competing and - well - making consumers happy by striving to have the best and least expensive service. Common fucking sense. Unfortunately there's nothing common about it..
(For those of you who don't think this is an enforced monopoly - Right now I only have one choice for broadband - optimum. Time warner services buildings two blocks from me, but I'm in a different district in brooklyn and TW is legally restricted from servicing the area -- because it's optimum's area.)
Comcast may think they have the right to do what they are doing but this is all bad publicity. That though is the normalized side of things. They'll loose lots of business.
What Comcast may not be understanding is that shitting on the FCC now means the FCC will shit on them later. Guaranteed. Comcast is burning bridges.
They need to disassociate their activities completely with any blocking and open the network and become neutral. What the FCC will probably do is give everyone the right to sue Comcast over what the consumer does on line. Essentially they are removing their own neutrality.
Comcast is far to simplistic in their thinking and dangerous in their actions.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
common carrier is different than open access. Comcast can be a closed network to outside companies, but a common carrier to their customers. The FCC has said they don't have to share lines, but Common Carrier status is determined differently. Although port blocking VIOP and such probably disqualifies them.
The way to fix this is a lawsuit from somebody sued by the RIAA that Comcast should have blocked them from doing bad things (not a common carrier) and/or Comcast should be preventing Media Sentry from trolling Comcast IP addresses looking for infringers (not protecting privacy of it's private clients). After all, if what they manage customers to do is "private" then what other people can access about their network should be "private" too.
I would note that it is up to the FCC to determine if Internet service over Cable is a mature technology to the point that it should be opened to providers other than the company that owns the cable plant. If the FCC decides that it is, then Comcast, Time Warner, and other cable companies will be required to open their plant to third party internet service providers, just as Qwest, Verizon and AT&T do for DSL service.
Comcast's monopoly techniques and customer complaints to the FCC are likely to result in a review of their decision a few years back that allowed them to get to the position they are in at this time. I tend to suspect that there is a significant percentage of the Comcast subscriber base who would consider an ISP connection cost of $20 a month across their cable plant to be a significant improvement over the current $100+ a month fees. (Sure Internet service is only a $50 part of that bill, unless you decide not to have cable TV service in which case it becomes a $75 a month charge.)
I.e. there's a 250% mark up compared to DSL with possibly double the bandwidth potentially available, and the opportunity to have your P2P sessions interfered with.
A reminder, the reason Comcast has been interfering with P2P sessions is that they have not built the capacity in their plant to handle the volume of customer traffic. They may be really happy to announce that they are now looking at rolling out DOCIS 3 with it's 100 meg to the customer bandwidth, but it appears they have not built the backbone to allow customers to make use of it. Lots of luck there.
You never know...
True, false, whatever. The market is entirely capable of fixing this problem.
Here's the solution: Common carrier. There, problem solved.
All you have to do is say, "If you route every packet on your network the same regardless of origin, destination, or content, you are a common carrier, and you are not liable for what those packets constitute. If you treat anything flowing over your network preferentially, you are not a common carrier, and you are liable for the content of ever packet that travels on your network." Simple. Nobody is going to put their company in the path of child pornography enforcement. All this talk of extra legislation for net neutrality is completely unnecessary. The common carrier laws are already in place, the only remaining step is to clarify that they apply to data as well as voice.
I love the idea of net neutrality, but I am convinced we don't need an extra law to make it happen. Just enforce common carrier.
Am I missing something here?
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
And the people to bitch to about that would be your state and/or local politicians, because that's who granted the monopolies in the first place. I've never heard of a Federal cable franchise agreement......
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Unfortunately corporations DO run the government not the other way around. It's caleld Lobbiests, payoffs, bribes and the like. If a corporation wants something they just write a check and they get a law in their favor, a favorable ruling in court battle etc.. It's the facts.
The Truth is a Virus!!!
Quite a few people, actually, but that's not the point (POTS is available on FiOS, albeit without line power). The point is that by cutting out the copper lines to your address you lose the option of switching to a CLEC for DSL or POTS services, i.e: your choices of internet/telephone service providers are reduced.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Spectrum liberation is possible and it would put Comcast and their greasy counterparts in other areas out of business overnight. The FCC and FTC made these bitches and can break them because the public owns the air and public servitude. A sea change in administration is coming. Comcast should shut up before they find themselves replaced. The whole point of creating Comcast and friends was control. It would be better to have a government that was interested in freedom but that too would screw Comcast.
Don't be confused by the bluster. The government is in control.