In Depth
Boehner Urges FCC Not to Regulate Web Traffic in Comcast Case
As the Federal Communications Commission prepares to say Comcast Corp. acted illegally and too broadly in limiting some users’ trading of movies and music as part of Web traffic management, a congressional leader is urging the FCC not to act.
In a letter Thursday, on the eve of an expected FCC vote to sanction Comcast, House Minority Leader House Republican Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, called the move “unprecedented regulation of the Internet” and urged FCC Chairman Kevin J. Martin to keep the Web free of regulation.
“This dangerous path would limit freedom, stifle innovation and entrepreneurship, and kill American jobs. Internet regulation is a solution in search of a problem,” he said. “We should maintain the hands-off approach that has served the Internet, the American people and our economy so well.”
The FCC action stems from steps Comcast took to deal with heavy peer-to-peer traffic and congestion; it involves some of the issues first raised in the congressional and FCC debates over “net neutrality.”
The arguments were over whether the government should act to ensure Internet service providers didn’t offer favored Internet content a better path to consumers’ computers than other content. At the time, providers and some congressmen argued there was no reason to act, because there was no evidence any content was getting favorable treatment.
That changed when the Associated Press reported last year that Comcast was sending false signals to users’ computers to cut off connections with file servers and effectively stop downloads, even as Comcast allowed other downloads to proceed.
Consumer groups Free Press and Public Knowledge complained to the FCC that Comcast’s action amounted to discrimination. They also argued that Comcast had acted overbroadly and illegally in not telling subscribers and in blocking most peer-to-peer downloads, even at times the network wasn’t congested.
Comcast has questioned the FCC’s authority to act, but it also has since worked with file-sharing sites and consumer groups to incorporate more tailored network traffic management practices.
Leave a comment
Comments 2
Phil K
Frankly, I am getting sick of the whole Republican litany about government regulation. Every time some big corporation does something against the public interest and the government tries to regulate it, there are the Republican pols claiming regulation will stifle creativity, cost jobs, etc.
This is the same tired argument the GOP always uses against improving health care, cleaning up the environment, allowing workers easier acess to join unions, etc.
Two or three generations ago, the same philosophy was used to oppose OSHA and the National Labor Relations Sct, as well as Social Security-all on the grounds that those laws took away people's right to decide contract for work without having these benefits.
What about Comcast stifling creativity by what it did to the plaintiffs in this case? Boehner says there was no evidence-clearly the FCC, which has much more expertise than Boehner, thought otherwise.
Also, the GOP favors FCC regulation of the "seven dirty words".
This is the party that claims to be pro-life yet lied to get us into an unnecessary war.
The GOP is the biggest con job going, in my opinion.
The Democrats are not much better, with their worship of "abortion rights.
L. Libal
Being in the cable industry, I am aware of what Comcast is up against. One has to understand that Peer to Peer Users, especially the ones that Comcast is targeting, although Comcast may have been targeting all peer to peer users, are downloading and uploading vast amounts of data per month. Some customers are even downloading and uploading in excess of 500GB of data per month and I have heard of customers using as much as 1TB in one month! These kinds of users can consume and slow an internet service way down or make an internet provider spend lots of money on bandwidth.
One would assume that much of this usage is generally for the downloading and/or uploading of illegal data such as MP3's, Movies, etc. especially when it is on this massive of a scale.
I find it interesting that the FCC is willing to defend those users that are more than likely breaking the law and the very users that the Motion Picture Association, the Recording Industry, and the FBI are trying to curtail. It would interesting to see a projection/% of peer to peer users that downloading/uploading illegal data as opposed to those that are d/l and u/l legal data. My estimate would be that the illegal users are probably 95% while the legal users are 5% if not less.
Granted, BitTorrent, in the past year of so, recently began downloading/renting legal movies via their website via peer to peer so certainly it is not fair to limit legal downloading of movies, etc.