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."

Comments

Re:The Republicans are correct

[Reality Master 101]

So you won't mind if I send some mail and list yours as the return address then?

So, let's say you go to a Halloween party and dress as a police officer. You are technically breaking the law -- impersonating a police officer. But I think most people would say that would be an abusing the law through a use for which it wasn't intended.

Impersonation laws were not written and were not intended to cover subtle technical distinctions. They weren't using this traffic control method to defraud people -- they were using it for traffic control.

Unfortunately, this is another case where people are not looking at the bigger picture. They get all happy when a law is abused in a way they approve of. They don't see that this sets dangerous precedents for the government to use laws to abuse you in ways you won't approve of.