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FCC Votes To Punish Comcast
MaineCoasts brings news that three out of the five FCC commissioners have voted in favor of punishing Comcast for their P2P throttling practices. The investigation of Comcast has been underway since January, and FCC Chairman Kevin Martin made clear their conclusion a couple weeks ago. Ars Technica has coverage as well, noting:
"The initial report on the vote said nothing about which way Republican commissioners McDowell and Tate might lean. FCC watchers wouldn't be at all surprised to see both vote against the order; the really interesting moment could come if they support it. Having four or even five commissioners support the order would send a strong bipartisan signal to ISPs that they need to take great care with any sort of discriminatory throttling based on anything more specific than a user's total bandwidth."
So whose side is the FCC on? they seem pretty two-faced to me.
Ow, my wrist!
One CPU cycle wasted on digital restrictions management is ONE TOO MANY.
The Government is doing their job by stopping the ISPs from abusing their power. Costumers paid for unlimited bandwidth and that's what they should get. If Comcast doesn't like that they should change their plan.
Comcast will be along shortly to check any negative posts against their outgoing traffic logs.
Yea, when I am running torrents what Comcast does to me is make it so I drop like 30-80% of all (not just torrent) of my packets every 5-10 minutes, then it comes back up (tested via pings). My torrents are still blazing fast when I actually have a connection. All I do is spoof my router's MAC to a random number, release and renew my IP (to chick they give me a new one) and my internet works PERFECT for 2 days until they start the process over again. Annoying, but it's amazing they are so stupid they won't associate my IP with my MODEMS MAC instead of the router/PC. BTW, If I shut off my torrents after getting a new IP, I *never* need to reset the MAC as they never force me to drop packets.
adventure-today.com
Punishment enough would be for the FCC to require Comcast to double the capacity of their network every 18 months.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Regardless of your stand on Network Neutrality, the fact of the matter is that what Comcast did was absolutely legal. The FCC is overstepping its bounds by acting like NN is already law. You might like this particular decision, but it sets a bad precedent for the FCC doing whatever it wants without regard for what the law actually is. You might not like the next decision.
The FCC should be an enforcement arm of the government, not a legislative arm.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Im glad that our elected officials are taking meaningful, important and proper steps to curb wrongful practices by large businesses. Hopefully they will go after the phone companies ne--oh that's right, nevermind.
By and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth. -- George Carlin
Why was sudden outbreak of common sense? not added in?
The FCC are yes men/women.
They're only doing this so Comcast doesnt have to look like the bad guy, when they lower their bandwidth per month usage. This is so they can say "Well the FCC wont let us throttle P2P users, so we're going to raise prices for high bandwidth users, and cut bandwidth for everyone at the current rate"
The government would never do anything to hurt a corporation.
Isn't that convenient? The will of the people will be done, and the will of the people is that douchebag corporations don't abuse the people after being gifted billions of the peoples' tax dollars to build network infrastructure.
Blar.
I have Crapcast. Last month, my internet charge jumped by about $40 (I was unable to get a useful answer from them as to why, just lip service about "increased service charges"). How much do you want to bet that they will just pass the fine along to their subscribers?
Sadly, they are a monopoly in my particular town.
If you sell something you don't own (bandwidth), then it's your fault, not the buyers.
What's really needed is QoS. You get X MB per month of high quality, Y MB per month at medium quality and Z MB (maybe z=inf) at low quality, and a final unlimited lowest quality, throttled down to something quite small.
Your app sets the QoS level it wants (eg voip sets high quality). When you run out of the quality level set, traffic automatically gets demoted to the next one you have. Or, you can buy more a la carte.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Tiered or capped bandwidth is not the problem here. Net Neutrality is the problem.
The most fundamental way to distinguish between the two is that violations of Net Neutrality will lead to tying between different relevant markets, a critical Antitrust concern.
Tiered or capped bandwidth ALREADY EXISTS at Comcast, and has been around since the days of Compuserve and timeshared systems.
AT&T in the 1980s could charge you for every minute you were on the phone, but they sure as hell couldn't tell you that you could only call their preferred pizza delivery services. I hope you can see why that matters.
I bet the "punishment" will be "because of your nasty p2p hax, you must remove all the alt.* hierarchy from Usenet."
Well, that's just comcastic!!
"The Wall Street Journal reports tonight that commissioners Copps, Adelstein, and Martin have decided against the cable giant, paving the way for an official vote when the order is publicly voted on next Friday."
My comments here are my own; I do not speak for my employer.
I know it won't be anything like this; but I have this wonderful image of Comcast's CEO's face smashing into the hood of his limo as they slap the cuffs on and take him away...
I consider that in politics, the two major parties serve the same function that guilds used to serve in commerce. The purpose of a guild was to lock out competition by raising the barrier to entry. That the two major parties serve this function is why you generally never see minor parties win any elections beyond the local level, because if you aren't either a Democrat or a Republican, you don't get the media time and the campaign donations and the political support that it takes to win major elections.
For some reason, we recognize that a monopoly or a duopoly is bad for everyone when it comes to commerce/money, but we do not seem to realize that this is even more true when it comes to political power. This is absurd considering that political power is even worse than money when it comes to what people will and won't do in order to obtain it. There are no major philosophical differences between the two major parties when it comes to the question of what is the proper role of government. They both want to expand the power and size of government; the only "debate" is how to go about it and which reasons should justify it. That there is no longer any real difference between them is why the presidential election has to be this big dog-and-pony show that is dragged out to take up months and months of time, because this is necessary to take very tiny differences and make them sound like distinctive features.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
All Comcast needs to do to get this overturned is find a judge that isn't a Comcast customer.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Instead of fining a single boob, the FCC moved up to fining plural boobs. Business as usual.
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
Obama supports blanket immunity for telecoms, the democrats are pretty much wholly owned by the media and comms companies. Clinton brought us the DMCA and it's ridiculous measures.
God fucking damnit I hate stupid dumbass Americans talking "political". Nothing but straw man attacks on the "other side" with no real acknowledgement that there is no "other side". The two parties of the two party system are WAY THE FUCK to the right of center, each are owned by the same corporate fucks.
And you toads actually buy into this shit and spend all your time infighting.
WELL HERES HOPING THOSE SCUMMY REPUB-LIE-CANTS DONT FUCK IT ALL UP M-I-RITE-GUYS !
It was wrong and stupid to mod this down as a troll because the AC's point was quite apt. No one US political party has the moral high ground when it comes to wiping their asses on the Constitution, in telecommunications or any other field. They both use the same roll of parchment to eradicate the spinchter cling-ons, and the same group of plutocrats always seem to get paid no matter whether the paymaster has an R or a D by his name.
No mod points, no meta-moderating/Firehose/all the other free work Slashdot wants me to do.
That the two major parties serve this function is why you generally never see minor parties win any elections beyond the local level, because if you aren't either a Democrat or a Republican, you don't get the media time and the campaign donations and the political support that it takes to win major elections.
This is blatantly off-topic and I'll happily accept the modding down this is going to get, but if third parties in the US would run candidates who didn't turn themselves Smurf blue from drinking too much colloidal silver or allow racist tripe to be published in newsletters under their own name for almost 10 years, they would do better at the polls and perhaps even win some races.
No mod points, no meta-moderating/Firehose/all the other free work Slashdot wants me to do.
There's just no way that what you said could explain why third parties generally have not won any major federal elections for generations. If what you pointed out were the only problem, then someone somewhere would have gotten it right. I can understand if you don't want to believe it and prefer rationalization in order to explain it away but it's really quite simple: there is a deliberate, concerted effort to control access to media and funding and to frame debates (mostly in the form of false dichotomies) and to marginalize anyone who might otherwise threaten to change the status quo. There is no "smoky back room conspiracy" needed. The only thing needed is the understanding that politicians do not want to give up their power and will take steps to entrench that power whenever they have the opportunity (for an unrelated example, see "gerrymandering"). They are not really "conspiring" to do it any more than the thousands of employees at Microsoft are "conspiring" to produce Windows products; it's what they set out to accomplish and it takes either a fool or a lot of denial to fail to recognize this.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
This is a serious question. As a user of the Internet, naturally I don't want my ISP throttling my connection based on my surfing habits, but I'm not sure I'm comfortable with the government getting involved here.
Now, given that cable companies typically operate with a government granted monopoly to run cables to people's houses, it is perfectly reasonable that perhaps they have some obligations to go with that monopoly, but I'm not aware of any such obligations in legislation at this time. On what legal authority is the FCC basing their complaint at this time? If they do have "rules" about even-handed, open Internet access, do they apply to all ISPs, or just those that are taking advantage of a government granted monopoly? Do these rules apply to anyone running a router? Are they just making up rules as they go along? As much as I dislike Comcast's policies in this matter, the actions of the FCC frighten me a lot more.
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
More like "Stop patting my wrist, you're annoying me"...
The whole reason Comcast is able to even consider throttling a possibility is because of the monopoly handed to them by government restriction preventing the construction of additional internet access lines by competitors. Competition would make it ridiculous and dangerous for a company to think of restricting their own customers, as the customers could simply go elsewhere.
What this result shows is that the FCC, which has driven away all of its best technical people during the past eight years, is now purely a political organization. And because the law requires a 3-2 partisan split among the Commissioners, it means that most of its decisions will be influenced by partisan politics rather than what's best for the people.
If the Chairman and the two other Commissioners of the same party agree on something, it sails right through. (This is what happened with travesties such as the Sirius-XM merger.) However, if the Chairman is motivated to support an agenda to which the other party subscribes, he can expect the two Commissioners of that party to fall into lockstep due to partisanship. That's what happened here. McDowell and Tate, the Republicans, want (as McDowell put it) to "let engineers solve engineering problems." But the Democrats, beseiged by the left-leaning Democratic lobbyists of Free Press, voted to regulate the Internet both because of the Democrats' inherent desire to regulate and because they swallowed the falsehoods of their fellow partisans at Free Press uncritically. So, if the Chairman was willing to support the same result, it would happen.
The question, of course, is why Martin -- a Republican -- would be pro-regulation. I do not know Kevin Martin, but several theories have been floated on various blogs. The first is that the Chairman was feeling pressure from Congress. (He was on the hot seat less than a month ago before a Congressional subcommittee which strongly suggested that if he did not regulate, they'd take matters out of his hands.) The second is that he is "anti-cable," and -- regardless of what harm he might do to the Internet -- wanted to take a swipe at Comcast. (Some bloggers have speculated that Martin is bucking for a job as a telephone company executive or board member when he retires from the Commission, and so is giving those companies the quid pro quo for obtaining such a post. I certainly hope that this is not the case, but then, I do not know him.)
Many people have also noted that the slates of panelists at the two hearings on network management were stacked against Comcast. In Boston, the ratio was about 2:1; at Stanford, it was 6:1. Since the Chairman picks the panelists (the other Commissioners can offer advice, but he need not take it), the fact that even the first hearing was heavily stacked against Comcast suggests that the Chairman or his staff may have had a predisposition to rule against Comcast from the start.
In any event, the fact that only one witness at either hearing was actually engaged in business as an ISP strongly suggests that politics, not engineering facts, would rule the day. And they did. The lobbyists and lawyers of Free Press, an inside-the-Beltway lobbying group which spent more than $700,000 on various Internet agendas in 2007 alone, repeated statements which were simply technically false again and again until the Commissioners believed them. And little guys like my own independent ISP? We got 8 -- count them -- 8 -- minutes to talk. This is not promising for the future of the Internet. If it's dominated by politics, and especially by an agency which has lost its technical compass and rules on the basis of politics and partisanship -- the Internet is in trouble.
Unless it involves substantially massive fines it's not punishment.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Throttling internet speeds is just the beginning and it needs to be punished quickly and thoroughly before other practices are brought about leaving the ISP customer to choose which provider has the least amount of access restrictions. A minor slap on the wrist will not be enough.
DATA TRAFFIC.
Jesus fusking chribt on a pony; Bandwidth is speed. Data traffic is amount of data transfered.
How many escape pods are there? "NONE,SIR!" You counted them? "TWICE, SIR!"
Some kind of exception is in order. Or perhaps it's already there and it just needs a clarification so everyone can see it better.
Remember that the internet is a series of tubes. The ISPs are the pipework, the customers' systems are sinks and reservoirs, and the act of running an "application" is turning on a spigot either to send liquid from your own reservoir to someone else's sink, or to draw liquid from someone else's reservoir to your own sink. The regulations only enforce unrestricted flow through the pipework, not the source and destination systems. This is a necessary step for the internet to work: that packets are routed as efficiently as possible through any intervening systems to get to their destination.
The distinction is important because if someone tries to do something rude into your sink (just imagine it, I dare you), you have every right to work to prevent it, up to and including contacting the other guy's ISP, your own ISP, and federal authorities. Some of that might even tie neatly into guideline #5 above. Likewise, if someone's trying to jiggle the handle to get banking information out of your reservoir (flow of liquid assets, what else?), same thing applies: you have the right to take countermeasures and contact the authorities.
Contrast those with the case where a plumber somewhere in the middle takes exception to the kinds of things flowing through his pipes, and restricts the flow of things he doesn't feel like relaying for whatever reason. Unless it's known to be illegal, that's a no-no according to the regulations. The sender's willing to send it, the receiver's willing to receive it, corking the line will do a disservice to either or both parties, and the full weight of the law in that case means something.
There's another case, where someone tries to do something to the ISP, in order to change routings or get an unfair pipely advantage. That is actionable, because the ISP has its own systems, and the someone is trying to jigger with one of those.
You cannot truly appreciate Dilbert until you read it in the original Klingon.
That's not a good analogy. There's only one way in which the Internet is like plumbing: the awful, smelly pile of unwashed stuff piling up in the sink. (Gotta clean out my hard drive.)
I was a Comcrap customer for years before I switched to FIOS. You can change your router's MAC as often as you like, and you do indeed get a new IP address. You seem to be confused between the cable modem and the router. Please turn in your geek card at the desk on your way out.
...but how about forcing them to open up the ports they block to my mail server while they are at it? I'm paying for access to the internet. I'll take care of my own firewalling, thanks.
oh, okay, just the chains and whips, then. we know the last part ain't going to happen.
but if you are going to require open access, as the web wants, and free passage of data without some busybody in the back room dinking with it, as the customer wants, the best way to encourage the others is to whack the guy you first catch. hard.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
"In light of our recent wrist slapping, it has become necessary that we increase the cost of all our cable television packages by a small amount. The cost increase of $17.35 a month will be reflected on your bill starting on September 5th, 2008. Thank you for using ******* and have a great day!"
I find it interesting that republicans stand against net neutrality. The party that stands for "traditional" values, the party that has always stood for freedom of speech for some reason is doing an about face on this issue.
As I explained in my testimony at http://www.brettglass.com/FCC/remarks.html, the agenda that is falsely being promoted as "neutrality" isn't neutral at all. In fact, it prohibits ISPs from enforcing neutrality, letting P2P take over the networks and shift costs from content providers to ISPs. (That's neither neutral nor fair.) It's being done for the benefit of a few corporations -- such as Google, Vuze, and Slingbox -- that support the lobbyists at Free Press, MAP, and the other organizations that ae pushing for regulation. Google, for example, funds Larry Lessig's empire on the Stanford campus, so Lessig (a board member of Free Press) has gotten it to pursue Google's "cause."
What's more, there's no "free speech" issue here, because Comcast was not censoring the Internet. (Comcast is even letting its users right through to the site of Free Press, which is posting outright lies and slander about it.) Note, however, that the government is censoring the Internet in schools, and is proposing to offer censored public Wi-Fi. (The proposal is now before the FCC.)
So, as you can see, the Republicans actually are for true neutrality -- which in this case means not letting the government pick winners and losers by regulating.
In bulgaria all the institutions are conspiring to screw you. In america they screw theyr corporate overlords as well. Mmmm, that actualy sounds better. Wait....
I know full well that tobacco is bad for you, so I smoke weed with crack