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Net Neutrality Suffer Setback in DC Court

Nomad V

Nomad V

Fleet Captain
Fleet Captain
The FCC was beaten back by Comcast on the Net Neutrality issue. Basically the court said that the FCC went beyond their rights in telling Comcast and other carriers that they cannot limit band width (?) to sites like YouTube or use programs like Bit Torrent to get movies. This might come back to bite them on their aquisition of NBC. It looks like Congress might have to get involved, but I have no faith on their ability to make a Net Neutral decision. Here is the link to the NY Times article.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/07/technology/07net.html?hp

What do you all think? I think that net neutrality is a good idea.
 
Net Neutrality is a great idea if you like the internet the way it is right now. But it looks like those days are numbered.
 
Awesome Possum said:
Net Neutrality is a great idea if you like the internet the way it is right now. But it looks like those days are numbered.
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I do like it the way it is, but I agree that "these" days may be numbered. I wonder how other countries handle it.
 
It's not so much that this is a setback as it is making it more clear where net neutrality has to come from... which is, in this case, congress. The courts are correct, the FCC doesn't have the power to enforce things on Comcast in this way but they should and that can be addressed with legislation.
 
Arrqh said:
It's not so much that this is a setback as it is making it more clear where net neutrality has to come from... which is, in this case, congress. The courts are correct, the FCC doesn't have the power to enforce things on Comcast in this way but they should and that can be addressed with legislation.
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Exactly. The law needs to be set down without ambiguity, that all packets must be treated equally regardless of their originating network or destination. Change routing priority based on the required priority of the application, but things like traffic shaping--throttling certain protocols--is against the very notion of network neutrality. Internet usage patterns should not be socially engineered by ISPs.
 
Awesome Possum said:
Nomad V said:
Awesome Possum said:
Net Neutrality is a great idea if you like the internet the way it is right now. But it looks like those days are numbered.
Click to expand...

I do like it the way it is, but I agree that "these" days may be numbered. I wonder how other countries handle it.
Click to expand...
Most just have far higher bandwidth than we do. The US is like 16th or 17th on the list for internet speeds.
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That's mostly because our population is so spread out. It's easy to get ridiculously high speeds when your population is very dense, like it is in Japan.
 
Robert Maxwell said:
Awesome Possum said:
Nomad V said:
I do like it the way it is, but I agree that "these" days may be numbered. I wonder how other countries handle it.
Click to expand...
Most just have far higher bandwidth than we do. The US is like 16th or 17th on the list for internet speeds.
Click to expand...

That's mostly because our population is so spread out. It's easy to get ridiculously high speeds when your population is very dense, like it is in Japan.
Click to expand...

True, but even then there's a lot of controversy with telcos only stringing fiber down "select" neighborhoods.
 
Robert Maxwell said:
The First Amendment only restrains the government, not corporations.
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See, I don't agree with that. Corporations are artificial constructs which do not exist "in nature" created by the government. I think that as such any rules which are passed limiting the government interference in our rights should genetically carry over to the government's creations.
 
Mr. Laser Beam said:
The government does not create all corporations.
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Corporation: Legal entity, chartered by a state or the federal government.

Can a state violate your first amendment rights?

No. So, even if the corporation is chartered by a state and not by the federal government, it would still inherit that component of the first amendment, thanks to the 14th amendment.
 
Data Holmes said:
Robert Maxwell said:
The First Amendment only restrains the government, not corporations.
Click to expand...

See, I don't agree with that. Corporations are artificial constructs which do not exist "in nature" created by the government. I think that as such any rules which are passed limiting the government interference in our rights should genetically carry over to the government's creations.
Click to expand...

You're preaching to the choir here. :)

The problem is, the FCC doesn't go after corporations for censoring things--they go after them for not censoring. So, your average TV network is going to err on the side of caution and self-censor as much as possible, to avoid hefty FCC fines.

It will be a dark day if ISPs ever go down the same path, deciding you don't need to visit sites x, y, and z, because they may violate FCC "decency" standards.

What I'm saying is that the FCC is not interested in ensuring free speech, but rather enforcing restrictions on it. So, they are the last agency I would want patrolling Internet content.

On the subject of corporate censorship, I don't see how you could stop it. It's not practical to force a newspaper or magazine to print everything they're sent. On the Web, the most you could do is forbid ISPs from blocking specific sites based on content.
 
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