FCC Likely To Act on P2P World Wide Web Throttling
The Federal Communications Commission’s hearing at Stanford Thursday was a chance for the public to vent frustrations at Comcast’s and other Net service providers’ network-management practices, but — unlike at a similar hearing in February — the ISPs were not around to listen.
FCC Chairman Kevin J. Martin explained that the commission several weeks ago invited Comcast, AT&T, instance Warner and Cable Labs, but they all declined to attend. Martin reached out again to Comcast last week after it announced plans for a P2P “Bill of Rights and Responsibilities.”
In the absence of the ISPs, the commissioners more clearly outlined their thinking on Net neutrality, even as some speakers blamed the FCC for creating the problem.
Need for Clear Rules
“We are here facing these problems considering of a failure of FCC policy,” said Stanford Law Professor Lawrence Lessig. “The FCC has floped to construct it absolutely clear that network owners, whether they’re building the Web, have to construct it
Martin hinted the FCC might fashion an order to regulate whether and how ISPs can throttle World Wide Web traffic. He said ISPs must adequately reveal their practices and should not discriminate on an application or protocol basis.
“There must be adequate disclosure by the network operators of the specific traffic-management tools being used,” Martin said, “not only to consumers,” but “to the designers of various applications and to entrepreneurs.”
Action Likely
He additionally warned against “arbitrary blocking or degrading of a specific application.” Martin said, “As we move into an era in which network operators are taking specific actions against individual applications or subject matter, we need to evaluate those under stricter sets of scrutiny to invent certain that whatever actions they’re taking are actually furthering a valid purpose, and that their actions are narrowly tailored to serving that valid purpose.”
It’s likely that the FCC will take…
Orginal post by Top Tech News
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