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Comcast Says Should Be Able To Create Internet Fast Lanes For Self-Driving Cars (theverge.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Comcast filed comments in support of the FCC's plan to kill the 2015 net neutrality rules today. And while pretty much everything in them is expected -- Comcast thinks the rules are burdensome and hurt investment, yet it says it generally supports the principles of net neutrality -- there's one telling new quirk that stands out in its phrasing: Comcast now says it's in support of a ban on "anticompetitive paid prioritization," which is really a way of saying paid prioritization should be allowed. "The commission also should bear in mind that a more flexible approach to prioritization may be warranted and may be beneficial to the public," Comcast says in its filing. The key qualification is "anticompetitive," which is a term that could be interpreted in a lot of different ways depending on who's defining it.
Comcast doesn't just see paid fast lanes being useful for medicine, however. It also thinks they might be fair to sell to automakers for use in autonomous vehicles. "Likewise, for autonomous vehicles that may require instantaneous data transmission, black letter prohibitions on paid prioritization may actually stifle innovation instead of encouraging it," the filing says. This makes Comcast's position pretty confusing. Comcast says it opposes prioritizing one website over another. It even suggests the commission adopt a "strong presumption against" agreements that benefit an ISP's own content over competitors' work, but it's not clear how benefiting one car company or telemedicine company over another is any different.
Comcast doesn't just see paid fast lanes being useful for medicine, however. It also thinks they might be fair to sell to automakers for use in autonomous vehicles. "Likewise, for autonomous vehicles that may require instantaneous data transmission, black letter prohibitions on paid prioritization may actually stifle innovation instead of encouraging it," the filing says. This makes Comcast's position pretty confusing. Comcast says it opposes prioritizing one website over another. It even suggests the commission adopt a "strong presumption against" agreements that benefit an ISP's own content over competitors' work, but it's not clear how benefiting one car company or telemedicine company over another is any different.
Why should we use slower Comcast lanes in medicine?
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I thought that the idea of net neutrality...
Lots of people have their own ideas about what constitutes net neutrality, and not many of them are the same. There are some absolutists on both sides, and from what I hear talking to people, the general public is too unaware about the uses of contentionless/prioritized networks, and the measures necessary to keep harmful traffic at bay on the network at large, to sympathize with the provisions necessary to get the most out the Internet. Doesn't help that the telco companies are such a bunch of odious nipple twisters.
Personally I think we should ask math/game-theory/computational-simulation specialists to model what percent of the Internet needs to be "neutral" to preserve a beneficial market, and error on the more neutral side of that figure. And the model should include CDNs not just ISPs.
You know, evidence based policy and such, rather than just a tug of war between corporate greed on one side and hate for local cable companies on the other.
Someone had to do it.