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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."
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
So whose side is the FCC on? they seem pretty two-faced to me.
Mmmmh... a contradictory double-sided bias.. what could it possibly mean... maybe... I don't know.. a lack of bias?
You just got troll'd!
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
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.
No it isn't legal. They deliberately forged messages ( RST packages ) that were sent over the phone lines. That is a federal crime.
It's not a legislative arm. It has broad legislated enforcement mandates from Congress, going back to the early-mid 1930s on communications policy and enforcement. It is IN FACT an enforcement arm, upheld by SCOTUS. The US President, as in theexecutive branch appoints the commisioners.
That said, I don't agree with a lot of what they do, and they do have considerable power, but power that's not unlike that of the EPA, the military, and so on.
So is the Comcast pending fine a good idea? You bet. Once the pandora's box of stepping on protocols to favor another is open, it can't be shut. This sends a great signal to carriers that they'd best not fool with consumer access. Be a good carrier; don't mess with protocols to favor your own perceived traffic. Controversial no doubt; a good one this time, IMHO.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
No it isn't legal. They deliberately forged messages ( RST packages ) that were sent over the phone lines. That is a federal crime.
Yes, I've heard that theory, but it's a huge, if not ridiculous, stretch to claim that forged packets are some sort of illegal impersonation. I don't like what Comcast did, but I also don't like using abusing unrelated laws.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
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.
It's not a legislative arm. It has broad legislated enforcement mandates from Congress, going back to the early-mid 1930s on communications policy and enforcement.
Yes, exactly. Enforcement. Not legislative. We agree.
So is the Comcast pending fine a good idea? You bet. Once the pandora's box of stepping on protocols to favor another is open, it can't be shut. This sends a great signal to carriers that they'd best not fool with consumer access.
And then, frustratingly, you turn right around and are happy(!) that they go power drunk and implement network neutrality in direct violation of THE LAW. Do you not see the problem with this? Do you think your local police should be able to create new laws and ignore others?
That you like the new law they created out of nothing should be irrelevant. Think about the fact they think they can do anything they want.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
No. The Internet began Neutral... If the money-grubbers want to co-opt the Internet, then they'll have to overturn NN, not the other way around.
A man spends the first half of his life accumulating stuff, the second trying to get rid of it all.
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.
Is it not at least an equally huge, if not ridiculous, stretch to claim that it is "absolutely legal?"
Packet forging is rightly named---Comcast sends them as if they originated from me, when they did not. They do not advertise that they do it & I did not sign any document authorizing them to do it on my behalf. In fact, many AUPs prohibit forging and spoofing from their users & ISPs should be held to an even higher standard.
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.
Ok. Cite the law. They have the leeway. They can do this legally. It is their congressional mandate to do so; it's policy. Not every action taken by every agency needs to have a bunch of congress people dictating their every move and boundary. It's ok to develop policy; it's done every day in government and done so (often) with success for all parties considered. Sometimes it's awful, like Bush's meddling with the FDA and EPA. It's called trust within defined boundaries. They really can't do anything they want. They really can define policy and enforce it. Don't like the outcome of the policy-- then tell your congress person and vote out the executive branch. File suit, if you have nexus. I do, as I'm a Comcast customer. But I won't, as I don't do very many torrents. Most often, I download from a direct source. I have no need for sharing files that might be considered the intellectual property of others. I don't trust torrents anymore, anyway. I'd rather get things from an original source. And I don't want Comcast screwing up my streams, voice, video, or otherwise.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
What about the DMCA then, that says that if an ISP or other content provider blocks any traffic then they aren't protected as a provider and can be held accountable for any content that is transferred across their network? I guess if the ISPs can enforce one law and ignore another, why can't the FCC?
Thus begin most terrible trends...
FCC should be working harder to allow more competition — and to prevent the existing ISPs from colluding with each other: "We'll do this, if all of you do too — let's not compete on it.")
The meting out punishment for a particular practice the government is rather micro-managing.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
I'm going to assume for the moment that you do not have a legal education. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
The FCC is -- and should be -- both an enforcement and legislative arm of the Government. This is because it is an ADMINISTRATIVE body created by CONGRESS. Congress delegated [limited] rulemaking and ordermaking power to the FCC. That's not unusual: go look at the Enabling Acts of the other administrative agencies who handle a huge chunk of the rest of the way our Government functions. The Supreme Court has upheld the Constitutionality of agencies like the FCC again and again.
Now as to whether Net Neutrality is "already law", you would need to define what you mean by "law". Court made law? Statutes? Agency rules/orders? You do see the title of this, "FCC Votes to Punish Comcast" right? Guess what -- that's the action of the law. You may think the "law" is purely statutory, but then you'd be leaving out the Constitution, administrative bodies, common law, executive orders.
But hey, it's not surprising for me to see a subject line like "The Republicans Are Correct" spouted by someone who appears to know little about the law.
(Law student.)
I AM a Republican and I'm on the FCC's side.
It's debatable whether or not Comcast's conduct was legal. They advertised and sold "internet access". That has certain connotations. If instead of the promised "Internet Access" they sold a neutered version thereof, then they may have run afoul of Federal regulations.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
RIGHT!
If you shut down torrents, what else do you shutdown next??? Do you stop the NetFlix pipe because it competes with your own or business partner offerings!??!!?
No!
And that's what this enforcement sends a message about-- net neutrality must remain.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
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.
"Regardless of your stand on Network Neutrality, the fact of the matter is that what Comcast did was absolutely legal."
I don't think that has been established. Actively forging packets may qualify as an act of impersonation, which might be considered illegal. This may or may not be the case, but I suggest that the legality of what Comcast did is not yet a 'fact'.
A.
...bringing you cynical quips since 1998
So whose side is the FCC on? they seem pretty two-faced to me.
As always, they are on the side of the administrations loyal pets, the incumbent telcos.
Modding Trolls +1 inciteful since 1999
Well, that's just comcastic!!
it's a huge, if not ridiculous, stretch to claim that forged packets are some sort of illegal impersonation.
So you won't mind if I send some mail and list yours as the return address then?
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
> Is it not at least an equally huge, if not ridiculous, stretch to claim that it is "absolutely legal?"
How about 'barely legal'?
Indeed, the body of FCC commissioners is designed to be double-sided.
That said, I think it's pretty obvious that the commission makes biased decisions all the time. The Republican commissioners are almost always unified, and the Democrat commissioners seem to swing over to the "regulation is bad, m'kay" position a lot of the time.
So it's okay for my to highjack BGP routes? After all I'm only sending packets.
"Ubuntu" -- an African word, meaning "Slackware is too hard for me". - stolen from Dan C alt.os.linux.slackware
"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.
Bribes were inadequate, I'd guess.. Foolish mistake for a company the size of Comcast.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
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...
This was a man-in-the-middle attack. Such efforts are illegal. Period.
Consequently the FCC is (rather surprisingly, I admit) enforcing the law as written. That's actually a good thing.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Your sense of legality and illegality are the crux for a need to understand more than I can explain in this forum. Competition means unfettered pipes, which is what the FCC is ostensibly punishing Comcast for-- non-"net neutrality".
And I haven't been called kid in over 40 years!
Additionally, after 14 books, and heaven-only-knows how many articles I've written, I've discovered that my choice of communications is my own, and those that would not understand emphasis via punctuation are looney. Two days ago, it was my choice of the word gendarme-- meaning policeman. Someone believed that the only correct use had to do with syntax connoting only French and only military policing.... all here on /.
You're entitled to your opinion, but not your facts. There.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
The FCC is -- and should be -- both an enforcement and legislative arm of the Government.
The FCC is mostly an interpretive arm of government, with *limited* ability to extend and enforce *existing* law. The cannot create new law out of whole cloth.
Now as to whether Net Neutrality is "already law", you would need to define what you mean by "law".
You seemed to have missed all the ongoing debate about network neutrality among the government. Apparently the real legislature does not believe that network neutrality is existing law.
But hey, it's not surprising for me to see a subject line like "The Republicans Are Correct" spouted by someone who appears to know little about the law. (Law student.)
Well, Mr. Student, you appear to have the attorney arrogance down already, if not the understanding of the concept of limited power.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Pity that in many many places, there is no competitor.
Marvin knew: "Think of a number, any number..."
Ok. Cite the law.
Do you believe that anything that is allowed must be allowed by law? No, the onus is on you to cite the law that Comcast violated by not embracing network neutrality. And yes, I understand that the way they did was controversial, but as near as I can tell, that's not why the FCC is acting.
And no, I think it's reasonable that I have to file suit to keep federal agencies from going crazy and doing something that is clearly beyond their authority. And it's clearly beyond it because the legislature is actively considering the idea of network neutrality. Given that, the FCC should have backed off.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
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
Now you have the crux of the matter.
The FCC is authorized by law (see the nineteen additions to the Communications Act of 1935 as amended) to set and execute this policy. Good thing their nipple wasn't showing, eh?
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
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
That's what it should mean, in reality it's more like a speedbump. They'll just try the same thing again, packaged in a slightly different way, and they'll keep on trying until they get a group of commissioners that agrees with them. This will go on until they're given stiff fines for their actions. Fines based on a percentage of their revenue, instead of a fixed number.
Murphey's fighting Occam, and we're in the stands.
Telcos? You're talking like they were plural. Yeah, Ma Bell was forcefully split up, but what has happened since is that all the baby bells have merged again, like metallic droplets flowing together to reform a blasted monster. With the SBC/AT&T merger, the monster is back with a vengeance.
At each opportunity, fight it or the Internet is doomed to support only a carrier's application by priority. It's that simple, not that the bribes to the campaign funds, lobbying efforts, and so on won't be tough to fight. Keep fighting. It's all we can do as greed motivations won't stop, either.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
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!
The FCC can make law within the bounds of its enabling act. Rulemaking and orders have the force of law. The FCC can't pass a rule that forces ignorant people to actually learn about the law before they speak, but they can create an order to punish Comcast, and they can make rules regarding network neutrality. You can go read the enabling act at: http://law.onecle.com/uscode/47/151.html
If it is arrogant to point out how wrong you are, then anyone with any education must seem arrogant to you. I guess that's the "liberal elite" hate we see from Republicans. Your statements are just as annoying as someone who comes to Slashdot apparently not knowing shit about computers, but still wants to talk like they do. Do yourself a favor and stop seeing knowledge as arrogance. It's not my job to coddle your ignorance.
And in regards to whether the "real legislature does not believe that network neutrality is existing law", there again you are clueless. Go read up on Antitrust law (tying), or the policy statement in section 230 of the CDA. Congress has been quite clear, throughout its history, that preserving competition is more important than preserving competitors, and that the Internet in particular deserves preservation as a free market.
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.
If it is arrogant to point out how wrong you are, then anyone with any education must seem arrogant to you. I guess that's the "liberal elite" hate we see from Republicans.
I give up. You're determined to read what you want to read, rather than what I actually say. Probably something to do with your frothing, foaming prejudiced hatred of just having the word "Republican" mentioned.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
A DOCSIS network runs over coax.
www.isoHunt.com
The FCC is mostly an interpretive arm of government, with *limited* ability to extend and enforce *existing* law. The cannot create new law out of whole cloth.
Yes, but the war powers act and Global War on Terror allows for the FCC to make their own laws targeted at specific organizations. At least that is the way I intpret it... or am I thinking of something else?
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?
I don't know about GP, but it seems that you do think so. Otherwise, maybe you'd say what law it is that makes it illegal to implement network neutrality instead of trying to avoid the question.
(IANAL)
Once the pandora's box of stepping on protocols to favor another is open, it can't be shut. This sends a great signal to carriers that they'd best not fool with consumer access. Be a good carrier; don't mess with protocols to favor your own perceived traffic. Controversial no doubt; a good one this time, IMHO.
This box you speak of has been open a long time. Prime evidence is port 25 shenanigans and other anti-spam measures, and there are others.
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.
hat has happened since is that all the baby bells have merged again
It is definitely going that way, but they aren't quite there yet. They haven't ALL merged together again.
After the breakup, there were 7 "baby bells". There are now 3 left: AT&T, Qwest, and Verizon.
- AT&T is SBC renamed after SBC acquired AT&T. SBC (formerly Southwest Bell) also acquired the baby bells Ameritech, Pacific Telesis, and BellSouth.
- Qwest was an independent which became a de facto baby bell when it acquired U S West.
- Verizon (formerly Bell Atlantic) acquired baby bell NYNEX.
The
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.
I curse the FCC for making a decision with which I agree! Kevin Martin voodoo doll, I hardly knew ye.
Whether or not they are illegal I wouldn't know, not being versed in US law. However, that they are impersonation is beyond doubt. After all, Comcast sent them with the "sender" field set to a third-party participant in a particular exchange with the deliberate attempt to deceive the receiver of the packet to think that it came from said third party. Furthermore, this was made with the intention of disrupting an ongoing communication; in other words, sabotage.
So what Comcast did was impersonation with malicious intent and the motivation of profit, as well as fraud - selling "unlimited" access to its customers and then engaging in sabotage so they couldn't collect what they paid for. I find it hard to believe that Comcast hasn't run afoul of some law here...
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
...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.
I find it odd that if an individual did what Comcast was doing they would be in jail, no questions asked. A large company like Comcast does a man-in-the-middle attack and we sit on Slashdot debating if they were in their legal rights to do it.
What truly is the difference between a hacker killing all HTTP traffic on Joe's network and Comcast killing all BitTorrent traffic on Joe's network. Absolutely nothing! Joe is still paying for bandwidth that he can not use how he wants because some hacker or Comcast doesn't like Joe's traffic.
Would there even be a debate on this subject if it was email, instant messaging, or even HTTP traffic that Comcast was throttling?
Windows is as solid as quicksand.
This apologist argument is absolutely disgusting because it fails to take into account a few things. First that Comcast from the very beginning denied doing anything. Next it's that Comcast continually would change its story depending on which part of the damn beast you spoke to. Finally it's that they were using deceptive advertising practices to tell customers they were purchasing one thing (unlimited internet access) while in fact giving them another thing. If you don't have a problem with your ISP doing what Comcast is doing, then I guess you must think it's pretty neat and legit for them to broadcast "HD" channels that are severely degraded in quality. Hey, just because the law doesn't specifically state you can't do that doesn't mean you can't do that! No, sorry, deceptive business practices are just that and I applaud companies getting what's coming to them when they're more willing to lie to customers and cheat them out of what they've paid for.
They should've been investing money in their infrastructure if they were having problems keeping up with their own growth, not fleecing the American public and lying about it every step of the way.
"We invented personal computing." - Bill Gates
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?
Congress has been quite clear, throughout its history, that preserving competition is more important than preserving competitors
then congress has departed from its history:
the dmca
the net act
the pro ip act
the pro-pirate act
ausfta, cafta, acta
if they did this 100 years ago it would be illegal to make, buy, or own a car. There would be a tax on every bicycle to be distributed to buggy whip manufacturers, and the natonal association of buggy whip producers would be allowed to regulate the roads, and the manufacture of all buggies, and related buggy accessories.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
"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!"
How about 'barely legal'?
more like patently illegal but they figure they could dazzle a jury with enough bullshit to get a "reasonable doubt"
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Impersonation laws were not written and were not intended to cover subtle technical distinctions.
You mean a subtle technical distinction like when a lawyer and president stated he didn't have sex with Monica Lewinski because fellatio isn't sex? Subtle technical distinctions are the stock and trade of both the legal and the regulatory trades and both tend to attract narcissistic assholes.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
You know.. in cases of divorce, or rape, maybe prostitution.. I can see someone being dragged into court, to ask if they have or not have had sex with someone.. The fact that any of the whole Lewinski - Clinton thing made into a courtroom (other than divorce), is like the stupidest waste of taxpayer money ever. The whole thing is a laughable and absurd.. that you find the whole "definition of word" the most disturbing thing about it is quite funny too.
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What the law says is that the FCC is in charge of making rules that must be followed. And now the FCC has determined that what was going on broke one of those rules.
Actually, the law -- the Administrative Procedure Act -- says that the FCC must announce in advance that it's going to make rules and go through a formal proceeding before passing them. The agency normally issues a "Notice of Inquiry" and then a "Notice of Proposed Rulemaking" and publishes proposed rules for public comment. This is a fundamental requirement of due process. It can't just go, "Hey, we're suddenly gonna make this policy statement, which we said wasn't binding, into enforceable rules just 'cause we say so." When the FCC tried to do the same thing by fining CBS for the infamous Super Bowl Wardrobe Malfunction, the courts slapped it down.
If the FCC is allowed to be arbitrary and capricious, it will have a devastating effect on investment in broadband.Who would ever want to be an ISP, or invest in broadband deployment, when the industry was regulated by an agency that was a total loose cannon? I am an ISP now, and if such a ruling is allowed to stand I will likely exit the industry.
Of course they will, just as they pass on any and all taxes, fines, fees or other costs of doing business. That's what the fine is, you know, a cost of business, nothing more.
Good, inexpensive web hosting
Hmmmm... legally speaking, not fulfilling the terms of a contract is illegal. In your parlance, what comcast did was to violate the terms of contract it had with its customers. This has been proven at all locations comcast wanted it tested.
Hence FCC, as sole mandated authority to regulate telecommunications, is authorised to convict Comcast.
The law says so.
The FCC is not an enforcement arm. Its duty like all other government bodies is to the constitution and laws of the land.
Power flows from the constitution to the authority and subsequently to bodies the authority creates.
In this case the congress created this body.
Read the constitution before you open your fly.
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
So that would be bit fields 10010 and greater?
Be relentless!
I'm neither your language teacher, or your law prof. Both failed you.
If someone taught you logic, they also failed. Your hubris teacher however, was excellent.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
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.
Very sorry for getting started on the wrong foot. We appear to disagree on whether the FCC was delegated the authority to do what it is doing, how much authority it has beyond that, the extent this action would fit in those boundaries. No worries.
Intellectual property may be a different beast, but the fact is I made an overstatement. Thanks for pointing out the error. Sorry about that.
Actually I really resented the whole pathetic affair, I look at it as the president is paid 24/7 and therefore he or she should conduct him or herself in a respectable and honorable manner 24/7. I find that he had a sexual affair disturbing, but that he had it with an Intern as President is only a notch above pedophilia in my book.
Not too many of us would live to tell if we tried that argument with our wives and got caught.
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I bet their base bias isn't at 0.7 volts!
Well.. there may have been a case for sexual harassment in the workplace.. However, this whole thing was brought about by a third party recording a telephone conversation. The morals of whether or not someone has an affair, even if that person is the President, have nothing whatsoever to do with whether or not it is illegal. Nothing illegal happened. Your married boss may be sleeping with the receptionist at work.. and although you don't like it, if the receptionist is doing it willingly then that is his, the receptionists, and the wifes business to sort out.. not anybody else's.. It is a strange country where people think that the President is like some deity, that should be held up to the utmost moral standards on the one hand, and yet be able to do all kinds of illegal nasty shit on the other, with "executive privilege".
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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