Net neutrality battle returns to the U.S. Senate
WASHINGTON--Net neutrality has returned to Capitol Hill.
The saga of Comcast's throttling of BitTorrent file-sharing traffic--and intense interest from the Federal Communications Commission, including a hearing at Stanford University last week--has appended the topic onto at least some politicians' to-do list.
At a Senate Commerce Committee hearing entitled "The Future of the Internet" on Tuesday, Democratic politicians argued for passage of a law designed to prohibit broadband operators from creating a "fast lane" for certain Internet content and applications. Their stance drew familiar criticism from the cable industry, their Republican counterparts, and FCC Chairman Kevin Martin, who said there's no demonstrated need for new rules, at this point.
Much of the discussion revolved around whether the FCC already has sufficient authority to take action against network operators found to be interfering unreasonably with their customers' Internet use. Comcast, for its part, has argued that the federal agency doesn't--and the Democrats present said their legislation is necessary to clarify the FCC's enforcement role.
"To whatever degree people were alleging that this was a solution in search of a problem, it has found its problem," said Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.). "We have an obligation to try and guarantee that the same freedom and the same creativity that was able to bring us to where we are today continues, going forward."
Kerry is one of the backers of a bill called the Internet Freedom Preservation Act, chiefly sponsored by North Dakota Democrat Byron Dorgan and Maine Republican Olympia Snowe, which resurfaced at the beginning of 2007 but has gotten little attention since. A similar measure failed in a divided Commerce Committee and in the House of Representatives nearly two years ago.
Chairman Martin told the committee that he continues to believe that the FCC doesn't need to write new regulations because it already has the authority to enforce its existing broadband connectivity principles, which say consumers have the right to access the lawful Internet content and applications of their choice.
He acknowledged, however, that based on Comcast's interpretation, his agency could face litigation if it opts to act on a complaint against the cable operator's throttling of peer-to-peer file-sharing traffic, which he characterized on Tuesday as "a relatively inexpensive, blunt means to reduce peer-to-peer traffic by blocking certain traffic completely."
Martin said the agency hadn't yet reached a conclusion about whether those actions violated its principles. Comcast, for its part, reiterated in a statement Tuesday that it "does not, has not, and will not block any Web sites or online applications, including peer-to-peer services," and it repeated its plans to migrate to a "protocol-agnostic" way of managing data flows by the end of the year.
With the threat of litigation looming, a number of Democrats questioned why Martin isn't asking Congress to grant the FCC new authority (or, perhaps, to clarify its existing authority) by rewriting the law.
"I believe what you are saying is that you believe you need authority to take action on these areas, and one of the biggest content providers says you don't have that authority, so shouldn't you be asking us to do something, in the event this is unclear, and you spend the next three to four years in court?" Dorgan asked.
Martin said he wasn't deterred by Comcast's implicit legal threat. He repeatedly cited the U.S. Supreme Court's 2005 Brand X decision that, in his judgment, stated that the FCC has legal authority to "adopt any rules we deem necessary to adequately protect consumers' broadband rights."
"Almost every action the Commission takes, we get taken to court," he told the committee. "That's probably why I'm not as hesitant, in that sense."
Kyle McSlarrow, president of the National Cable & Telecommunications Association, argued against any new regulations, saying there's no evidence that any of his member companies have ever engaged in content blocking or "anticompetitive conduct." He added that the NCTA, which counts Comcast among its members, fully supports the FCC's broadband policy statement.
But as for whether the FCC can stop companies from violating those principles, "it's not even a close call; the answer is no," McSlarrow told the committee.
"You support (the principles) but don't think they should be enforceable?" Dorgan asked him.
McSlarrow said he believes that there are other rules on the books to combat any unfair or anticompetitive practices, should they arise.
Republican senators, for their part, said the public outcry over the Comcast-BitTorrent incident and the ongoing FCC probe further demonstrates that there's no need for Congress to intervene. Committee vice chairman Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) called new rules "entirely unwarranted," contending that the Comcast situation "showed the system will right itself, if someone really tries to interfere with the fair access and right treatment of everyone using Internet systems."
A prominent representative of the entertainment industry disputed those assertions. Writers Guild of America West President Patric Verrone told the committee that without Net neutrality laws, the Internet will be "be turned into a walled garden of content control," making it harder for new voices to emerge and distribute their creations openly.
Stanford Law School Professor Larry Lessig, who also flew to Washington for the event, said politicians must enact laws that are as "minimal and (as) clear as possible." Without such measures in place, he said, Silicon Valley investors will be discouraged from devising applications because they won't know what the network will look like in five years. On the other hand, a future Congress can rewrite laws too.
Everything worked great when comcast got hauled in front of congress last time, but the day after the hearings...throttling began. I called comcast and everyone I spoke with denied they were doing it...several tech support people had the gaul to tell me they did not know what bit torrents were.
To this day it is still being throttled 24/7 not only when network congestion is bad.
With that said, I don't necessarily believe we need net neutrallity laws...just use the current laws in place...comcast says they will take them to court...you dont' think that no matter what laws are in place that comcast wouldn't take the government to court...
I am ok if they only did it during peak traffic...I can have my clients get the files at night, but they are doing it all the time and what they are doing is actually closing ports on their network gear...I can monitor the port and when it closes, I manually change my outbound port and it works for a couple minutes....
They just need to play fair which they are not currently doing...
Those 'illegal movie downloads' and 'illegal music downloads' are getting more and more rare, and reallly.... most people who download those things are NOT using BitTorrent, they are using other p2p programs.
The Republicans obey their masters, which is any big corporation with a vested interest in whatever legislation is the flavor of the month.
Get a clue. The GOP exists to line their own pockets with whatever filthy lucre they can scrape up. And, of course, when it comes to the internet they want more control. Why? Because a citizen with internet access has more information options available, and the GOP does NOT want people to have information. A well informed populace is harder to control and manipulate.
Not that they should worry overmuch. At least 50% of the US population LIKES being manipulated apparently.
You don't think the Dems are out to line their pockets...please...it has to do with politicians in general and not one party or the other or are you to blind to see that...(did you know there are more wealthy dems in congress then republicans...hmmmmmmm...who is out to line their pockets..
It's high time Comcast and other choke off the thieve air supply once and for all. They deserve it.
Politicians, have to get lots of money for their campaigns, to pay for advertising, and the kind of money it takes, ensures corruption. If this were not a requirement, if communication, in all forms were actually free, like the internet used to be, in its infancy. Then politicians could get elected on the value of their ideas alone, not on their corruptability.
The answer to this situation actually does lie with the FCC, but as recent auctions show the FCC is quick to sell out the american people, to big telco's, creating instant monopolies.
If there were more than speech and print at the time, do you think for 1 second our founding fathers would not have simply stated we have the right to communicate freely...regardless of the medium?
The 'black' downloads are few and far between.
This is the definition of net-neutrality. All traffic is treated equal. If they say they will throttle the top users at peak times to keep the network from becoming over congested thats fine as it ignores what they are doing, its content neutral, and it falls under net neutrality.
Now, however, everyone that's paid for this broadband service is trying to use it, and unfortunately, since everyone's trying to use the same piece of pipe, the pressure (throughput) suffers.
Now, Comcast, who has oversold their infrastructure, is trying to blame the consumers that are 'heavy users' for their lack of infrastructure.
This is not the consumers fault. This isn't the P2P people's fault. Comcast agreed to provide these people with the specified bandwidth, and then when they use it, they're slapping their hands for abusing their service.
When the providers stop overselling their product, and actually build up the network so that every user has the entire piece of bandwidth that they are paying for to themselves, the traffic problem will simply go away.
The problem is not sites having 'way too much media'... the problem is that the people who own our internet: ATT, Verizon, Comcast, etc. haven't been putting the money into expanding the capacity of the internet that they should have, up until VERY recently with Verizon FIOS and Comcast Blast.
The problem lies in the fact that there is very little legislation in place to stop this. I know that many will stop reading here and will dismiss me for having said this, but government intervention is hardly a sin.
In France, for example, France Telecom is largely government operated and they build the networks. Telephone, TV, internet and wireless networks all work off the same optical backbone that France Telecom built using tax money. As a result, residential services are approaching 100bmit symmetric speeds.
Now critics will argue that the french government is trying to pass legislation to stop illegal downloads. Europeans, however, are largely unfazed, and here is the crucial reason why: the government works for the people, and not the other way around. In North America, people are afraid of the government, whereas in Europe, the government is afraid of the people.
Supposedly the founding fathers of the United States understood that concept very well, being Europeans themselves. Where that got lost, I do not know, but its quite interesting to note this behavior can be noted in things as basic as network deployments. Net neutrality cannot truly be reached until somebody decides that the net must be neutral, somebody that has no agenda behind the decision. In this case, that needs to be internet users and nobody else...
Once the Govt gets its hands in this, it will meddle with everything. Next thing you know it will cost you 5 cents an email (gotta make up for lost revenue in the Post Office somehow) and other stupid unnecessary laws that shouldn't even be considered (but will).
Bottom line, All ISPs do some kind of traffic shaping; without it, networks would be horrible. How is it fair that one guy on the block uses a terabyte of bandwidth to upload stupid videos to Youtube or download every movie made in the 21st century and the guy next door cant check his email because one person is sucking the pipe dry?
They aren't flagging and dropping the traffic, just re-prioritizing it. It still gets thru, it just might not get priority over all other traffic in the pipe. I know we've become so selfish that we always think that the Youtube clip that we want to see paramounts everyone else's needs, but as the number of users on the Internet increase faster than the infrastructures can be built out, its just the nature of things.
Apparently we all forget waiting 20 mins to download a 1 meg file with 56k, so I dont think having your BitTorrent stuff throttled a little bit is the end of the world (DOWNLOAD IT AT NIGHT). Get the government involved, and theyll start messing with everything. If you need 50 terabytes a second, upgrade your service or get yourself a dedicated line. Otherwise, go watch the newest South Park about Internet outages and be happy your not still running on the phone lines.
Do you really think some Senator from Alaska (do they even have broadband in Alaska) has any idea about what they are talking about? They jump on the bandwagon because its the hot topic of the moment and make you think its important when its really not that big a deal.
ISPs want to give you as much bandwidth as they can, why wouldnt they, they dont make money by saving bandwidth, but everyone has the right to equal bandwidth if they are paying the same, so they shape traffic to be fair to everyone.
They are not providing the service they claim, not even close because they can't, they have oversold their capacity, and are throttling so they can sell more, never reinvesting in network expansion, like they should have done long ago.
BTW: You would not have the Internet if it were not for the government grant and dirctive that created it in the first place, and it existed for at least a decade (very securely I might add), before the big telcos realized they could have a whole new arena from which to gouge the end user.
That was the end of the real Internet, what you have now is a monster of polluted garbage, that only vaguely resembles what was once a great idea.
Shared connections like Comcast cable or my long range WIFI share a weakness, packet size/number ratio, mounds of small size packets create collison and retrys verses fewer larger packets that lower latency and improve volume. I have seen times when the BT packet and connection count looks like a DOS attack on a major website!
There is no amount of hardware or backbone availble that can overcome this problem for either cable or myself. The physical layer of these networks has inheirant strengths and weekness. Asking them not to do something to minimize a weekness is poor use of a valuble resource.
I would love the ability to allow everything to everyone Net Netural. My reality is far different.
One size BT does not fit all!
Rob
KSI
Rural Mississippi
- The Cable Companies Want to Bring Back the Pay Per Minute Bills
- by Kainchild April 26, 2008 11:03 AM PDT
- Ever since the Cable companies who also own phone companies lost to the unlimited usage plans trend have been dying to get that back and since now phones have to go through cable, this new law will be the only way to get this back. The whole charge for fast lane is a ruse.
- Reply to this comment
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(52 Comments)Once the bill goes through all the finer details that were added to the bill Through pork, etc) will come to light and the phone companies will be able to charge per minute usage of the internet to both you the user and other companies who have to go through their service not only giving them the excuse to raise the bill but also to be able to add an extra charge on how much you use it. Each Cable company gains, and YOU, as the consumer, will lose.