I can't believe no one else caught this, it's so very important and a great development in the ongoing fight to preserve net neutrality - that ability for us to be able to access what we want, when we want it, through the internet, without Comcast or Verizon telling us otherwise, or charging us a premium for it.
Yesterday, there was a public FCC hearing in Cambridge, MA. I couldn't make it to the event, but it was well attended, and the proponents of net neutrality were very well-spoken. WBUR's Curt Nickisch reported on the hearing (you can listen or read the transcript here):
NICKISCH: ...The regulatory panel is investigating how the cable company and Internet provider Comcast is restricting so-called peer-to-peer file sharing. Comcast executive David Cohen vigorously defended his company's right to manage traffic, saying the network would otherwise crash. So he said his company sometimes slows the high bandwidth traffic of some of its customers.
DAVID COHEN: All of this is designed to have a minimal, virtually imperceptible effect on a small number of users. The result of course is a wildly positive impact on the Internet experience of many more users who subscribe to our services.
NICKISCH: But most experts disagreed with Cohen's description. David Reed from MIT said he did an experiment; and found that Comcast is essentially forging network transmissions between users to make it look like each wants to end the transfer. Reed says that's deceptive and intrusive, and violates standard Internet practices for reducing congestion.
There were some real great lines from our side. Gilles BianRosa, a Harvard MBA and CEO of a video-on-demand company, Vuze:
We compete with Comcast in the delivery of video content over the Internet. What we have here is a horse race. And in this race Comcast owns the racetrack.
Then there was Marvin Ammori from Free Press:
Your Internet provider will pick your websites for you. Online companies and device makers like Vuze will need a permission slip to innovate. And providers will be able to profit from artificial scarcity.
But the best part about this is what the Republican chairman of the FCC said! According to Nickisch:
NICKISCH: After the hearing, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin said he's prepared to stop Internet providers from hobbling traffic. That's a key statement from a Republican who generally favors the market sorting things out on its own. Martin and the rest of the panel may get some help from Massachusetts Congressman Edward Markey. He introduced a bill last week that would give the FCC more authority on the issue.
I wrote a shorter post about this at my website, Left in Lowell, where I can normally be found. :)
Go Net Neutrality!! We need to keep fighting, but there's light at the end of the tunnel, at least in regards to the first battle! For more, visit FreePress.net.
UPDATE: A short comment from where I cross posted on Blue Mass Group, about a personal experience from yesterday's hearing:
I was at the hearing, and went to the social thing afterward, where I got to talk to the FCC Chair for a while. It seems he was not convinced of the need for the government to enforce traffic nondiscrimination until the recent Comcast scandal.