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Court Unfriendly To FCC's Internet Slap At Comcast
Several sources are reporting that federal judges have been harsh in their examination of the FCC's action against Comcast in 2008 for the throttling of Internet traffic from high-bandwidth file-sharing services. "'You can't get an unbridled, roving commission to go about doing good,' said US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit Chief Judge David Sentelle during an oral argument. The three-judge panel grilled FCC General Counsel Austin Schlick on the parts of communications law it could cite to justify the Comcast punishment. The FCC argues that it was enforcing an open Internet policy implicit in the law. Judge A. Raymond Randolph repeatedly said the legal provisions cited by the FCC were mere policy statements that by themselves can't justify the commission's action. 'You have yet to identify a specific statute,' he said. The judges' decision in the case could throw into question the FCC's authority to impose open Internet rules."
So all that needs to happen is a law must be passed. I can't wait to see how many pages it will take to say NO THROTTLING!
Knowledge = Power
P= W/t
t=Money
Money = Work/Knowledge so the less you know the more you make
Both Judges have a history of defending big buisness. This comes as no suprise that they would rule in favor of corporate interest.
Just because something is good policy doesn't mean a given implementation of it is legal. This is the reverse of the common rule that stupid laws aren't necessarily unconstitutional. The solution here is to get Congress to pass explicit net neutrality legislation. Unfortunately, the last such attempt died a gooey death.
A proper net neutrality law is long overdue. I don't want ISPs to ever be allowed to block any content, cripple any protocols, or artificially slow down any kind of traffic beyond whatever is necessary to ensure reliable service for all customers alike. A ruling against the FCC on its own ruling against Comcast would cause significant injury to US broadband users, and that's why we need some kind of legislation outside of FCC rules that will ensure ISPs such as Comcast can't cripple customers' connections. Pro-corporate judges then won't have a leg to stand on.
"In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."
For those who don't want to disable noscript, there's a better version of the article at http://www.nasdaq.com/aspx/stock-market-news-story.aspx?storyid=201001081217dowjonesdjonline000464&title=update-court-unfriendly-to-fccs-internet-slap-at-comcast
So the FCC can't rule by fiat? They should ask the EPA how they get to rule by fiat! Only seems fair.
I'd be happy enough if the ISPs were held accountable for delivering advertised bandwidth when they're not throttling. Does ANYBODY get advertised performance from ANY ISP? Most of 'em tell you up front they won't guarantee bandwidth. To provide some context, my whining comes to you today from the middle of Rural America- an area seriously neglected by the broadband industry.
I would think to a "reasonable person", who knows what the internet is (an internetwork of networks carrying internet protocol and internet control protocol traffic), that would mean I get to send and receive such packets to the ability of the provider to carry them, without discrimination, to the limit of the bandwidth I pay for.
IOW, if the traffic demand is D and the capacity is C, C D, the actual bandwidth available to someone desiring d is c=d*C/D.
When the law or contract is silent on a matter, the courts will generally apply a "reasonable person" interpretation on what the contracted agreement is.
Now, the FCC might have been out of place to punish Comcast, but that does not mean that subscribers would not be in a position to launch a breach of contract suit.
Comcast's tough if they oversold bandwidth to the point where they have to discriminate between their users so as to try to minimize the fraction that they piss off (which is really what they are doing -- punishing those that expect what they are paying for).
Disclaimer: I have Comcast business internet service with a static IPv4 address, and I had their residential service as well. I found significant variance in bandwidth available on their residential service, but not their business service. I expect it is not as oversold. I no longer subscribe to their residential service. I actually considered load-balancing outbound TCP sessions across both links at one point, but, given the variance, found it would have been more cost-effective to subscribe to greater bandwidth on their business line. In the end, I decided it wasn't worth it, or necessary, and dropped the residential service, keeping the business service.
In Liberty, Rene
If I understand this correctly what the judge is asking is what law did Comcast break in their actions. If I understand what Comcast was eventually charged with by the FCC wouldn't forgery or impersonating an officer or hijacking all be possible crimes committed? Comcast basically took a packet coming from a sender and hijacked it, injected it with the reset command (forgery), and sent the packet on it's way to the recipient (impersonating a packet from sender which could be looked at like a mail carrier or "officer" of the post office).
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
Because who defines 'good'? Giving a branch of government unbridled power to do 'good' one day gives them that same unbridled power to do something you vehemently oppose the next, and now they would have the legal precedent to do so.
You can't have a short term view of the law as a judge, and while it might not make them popular in the short run I'd rather our freedom be protected by forcing us to have our elected representatives pass a law for something we want (their entire job), rather then give a branch of our government unbridled power because they happen to be acting in our favor today.
Think about this, the FCC decided on their policy with little to no input from the citizens, and little to no recourse from the citizens. You can't vote FCC workers out of office. What would your view of the legality of what they just did be if they had come down on the completely other side of the issue and were punishing companies that didn't throttle p2p networks in the name of stopping piracy for 'public interest' but had no written law mandated or approved by our representatives to tell them or give them the power to do so?
You can't judge legality of a government organization's actions based on whether you think what they are doing is good, you judge legality based on whether they have the legal right to acting in the way they are according to the constitutions and laws set forth by congress.
Or a few thousand of them.
The reason corporations are a terrible idea for basic services is because of two issues: incentive and accountability.
When a corporation owns a basic service, the question is, "How much is the customer willing to pay?" The question when run by a local (meaning, city or county) government is, "How much does it cost to provide?" The incentive for a corporation is always to make the most amount of money possible. If there were no regulation or public utilities, America would look like South America, where a company can make a good profit providing services to the rich, and ignore everyone else. This leads to widespread poverty and income inequality, since you can't do any self-investment when most of your day is spent lugging water or kerosene or wood around for cooking, cleaning, etc.
The second question is of accountability. Corporations simply don't have to have any accountability towards individual customers. Sure, you can sue a company - if you happen to also employ dozens of lawyers and have a few million stashed away, you may have a fighting chance. When a very local entity is running the show, chances are you know the person in charge. They aren't hundreds or thousands of miles away in the top floor of some high security skyscraper - they're downtown, and you know some of the people who know them.
This method breaks down in large metropolitan areas if they aren't further divided into neighborhood councils. They work best when the board members running the utility can be voted out directly by the local populace.
The decision on what is and what is not a utility is an important one. Competition gives us good results in luxuries and commodities, since there are so many customers, and getting screwed on a dozen eggs or a TV isn't the end of the world. However, when the customers have no other options, and it's too expensive to duplicate services, locally controlled organizations are a great option. Better to make the internet a utility with 100% saturation - just like roads and electricity - and allow competitors to provide services over that platform.
PS All your privacy concerns are moot when the NSA is building NOCs inside of corporate datacenters already.
Uhhh...dude? I hate to break the news to you, but We, The People actually paid for those networks to the tune of 200 Billion (with a B) + in tax breaks and other incentives, and all we got in return was a fart in our general direction. Look up the telecommunications act of 1996 if you want to read the whole bill, but we gave over 200 billion in breaks and payouts for 45Mb nationwide broadband. What we got was the finger.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.