Quote :

" WASHINGTON - A majority of members of the Federal Communications Commission have cast votes in favor of punishing Comcast Corp. for blocking subscribers' Internet traffic, an agency official said Friday. Comcast, the nation's largest cable company, was accused of violating agency principles that guarantee customers open access to the Internet. Three commissioners have voted in favor of an order reaching agreement with the finding, enough for a majority on the five-member commission. But the decision will not be final until all five members have cast their votes. The commission is scheduled to take up the issue at its Aug. 1 meeting. The three votes in favor were Democrats Michael Copps and Jonathan Adelstein and Republican chairman Kevin Martin, who recommended the company be found in violation, according to the official, who asked not to be named because the vote was not yet final. The potentially precedent-setting move stems from a complaint against Comcast that the company had blocked Internet traffic among users of a certain type of "file sharing" software that allows them to exchange large amounts of data. The text of the order is not public. But Martin has said it will not include a fine. He also said it will require Comcast to stop its practice of blocking; provide details to the commission on the extent and manner in which the practice has been used; and to disclose to consumers details on future plans for managing its network going forward. "I continue to believe that is imperative that all consumers have unfettered access to the Internet," Martin said in a statement released early Saturday morning. "I am pleased that a majority has agreed that the Commission both has the authority to and in fact will stop broadband service providers when they block or interfere with subscribers' access." The FCC approved a policy statement in September 2005 that outlined a set of principles meant to ensure that broadband networks are "widely deployed, open, affordable and accessible to all consumers." The principles, however, are "subject to reasonable network management." Comcast spokeswoman Sena Fitzmaurice in a statement released Friday night said the company's network management practices are "reasonable, wholly consistent with industry practices and that we did not block access to Web sites or online applications, including peer-to-peer services." The action is the first test of the agency's network neutrality principles. Members of both the House and Senate have sponsored network neutrality bills, but they have never come close to becoming law. Large Internet service providers have fought against such regulation, arguing that it is a solution in search of a problem and that companies that spend billions on their networks must be free to manage traffic."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080726/ap_on_go_ot/internet_regulation;_ylt=AmkbnHxafYYIvaD2RyTmloL6VbIF

7/28/2008 9:54:12 AM

Yes, that is how democracy works. If you cannot get your law through the legislature then just pretend you did and start enforcing it. Bravo. Now we live in a country where beurocrats can impose their will upon society without worrying about freedom or even elections. One wonders why we bother having elections.

7/28/2008 10:40:36 AM

If LoneSnark had it his way, big corp could kill millions of people so long as the ramifications of their actions eventually lead to the closing of their doors to better competition (that only killed hundreds of thousands)

7/28/2008 11:17:54 AM

oh i thought this was about the Sirius/XM merger

7/28/2008 11:18:01 AM

oh i thought this was about the Sirius/XM merger

7/28/2008 11:28:18 AM

Way to fuck up again FCC. There is no guarantee of free and open access to the internet, sorry. If you want more competition than you need to force local markets to remove restrictions. Forcing a business who has broken no laws to submit to your whims is downright facist.

Way to set a shitty precident.

7/28/2008 11:41:56 AM

someone explain to my stupid self how this is anything but good for the consumer

7/28/2008 11:42:57 AM

The issue (at least in relation to LoneSnark and Shaggy's disapproval) is not whether punishing Comcast is good for the consumer (in this case it is). The issue is that the FCC is circumventing the law and setting a precedent based on their view of the case, not on the rule of law.

7/28/2008 11:49:10 AM

Correct. If the legislature were to deem it illegal to deny access to certain parts of the internet then they should make a law and the executive branch should enforce it. Thats how this country works.

Now the agrument over so called Net Nuetrality is something entirely different.

The FCC doing this would be like if Bush decided to imprision all gays because he thought it was a good idea.

[Edited on July 28, 2008 at 12:13 PM. Reason : .]

7/28/2008 12:12:37 PM

so, as it currently stands, ISPs have the legal right to block or restrict access to various web sites and/or services?

and the FCC is saying "oh, sorry, we meant for net neutral to mean that you couldn't do this, so we're just going to go ahead and punish you for it"?

7/28/2008 12:24:57 PM

This is stupid, just another example of pandering to the public and trying to look good in the media.

The FCC should work on opening more forms of communication (wireline and wireless) to commercial competition instead of playing referee for the duopoly we have now.

7/28/2008 1:14:28 PM

Quote :

"so, as it currently stands, ISPs have the legal right to block or restrict access to various web sites and/or services?"

There is no such thing as net neutrality. Its a myth. And it would be terrible to implement it as an open free-for-all like many morons in the blogosphere would suggest. Bit Torrent is extremely detrimental to Cable networks and the only solution is packet shapping, caps, or simply dropping those clients. They could increase the bandwidth 1000000000 fold and it would still cause network disruption.

Quote :

"The FCC should work on opening more forms of communication (wireline and wireless) to commercial competition instead of playing referee for the duopoly we have now."

Exactly. The FCC has no mandate to fuck with comcast's legal packet shaping. They do, however, have the ability to increase competition. Until then if someone wants to offer a bit-torrent friendly network to compete with Comcast, they just cant do it. Its not possible.

[Edited on July 28, 2008 at 4:07 PM. Reason : .]

7/28/2008 4:07:05 PM