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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."
That's not what this is about. Comcast was found by the FCC to be interfering in the traffic of specific application types, violating principles established by the FCC to allow customers open access to the Internet. The customers were not charged for the bits that were blocked, so it had nothing to do with bandwidth caps.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
It's not at all a stretch.. thats' why they call them "Forged Packets"
They *very clearly* do not come from the source that compcast pretends they come from.
"The government would never do anything to hurt a corporation."
Um, AT&T, Standard Oil, and a few other examples come to mind... plus, if you run a small business and have ever dealt with OSHA, you'll have plenty of other more modern examples ready.
While it's certainly true that the government supports corporate interests from time to time, it would behoove you to understand why it happens instead of making blanket assumptions.