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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.
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!
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 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.
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 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.
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
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.
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.
Ok, what? They were not charged for the blocked data? Are you nuts?
As a customer you are paying for XMb/sec download by yMb/sec upload on their network, not taking account of the fact that those speeds will be affected by traffic on other networks and the actual speed of the server, you still are paying for that bandwidth continuously.
If they are messing with your traffic and/or reducing your connection speeds on their network then they are not giving you the service you payed for. And they are violating federal law that prohibits ISPs from discriminating against data types.
It would be like the phone company blocking calls from an area that a lot of people call or intentionally reducing call quality to lower the number of calls from there.
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'?
"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.
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.
"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.
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
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.