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FCC Votes To Punish Comcast
Posted by
Soulskill
on Sun Jul 27, 2008 09:16 AM
from the time-for-your-whoopin' dept.
from the time-for-your-whoopin' dept.
MaineCoasts brings news that three out of the five FCC commissioners have voted in favor of punishing Comcast for their P2P throttling practices. The investigation of Comcast has been underway since January, and FCC Chairman Kevin Martin made clear their conclusion a couple weeks ago. Ars Technica has coverage as well, noting:
"The initial report on the vote said nothing about which way Republican commissioners McDowell and Tate might lean. FCC watchers wouldn't be at all surprised to see both vote against the order; the really interesting moment could come if they support it. Having four or even five commissioners support the order would send a strong bipartisan signal to ISPs that they need to take great care with any sort of discriminatory throttling based on anything more specific than a user's total bandwidth."
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Comcast's likely reaction to any FCC "punishment": (Score:5, Funny)
Comcast (Score:5, Funny)
"Throttling" (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:"Throttling" (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:"Throttling" (Score:5, Insightful)
I call bullshit on this.
The cable companies allow access to their networks based on MAC. What you are doing is possible, but you would need to call comcast and tell them that you got a new modem every time, which would look extremely suspicious. MAC addresses are also not random. So you cannot spoof it to a "random" MAC.
Your post also lacks continuity. You say that they start dropping "30-80%" of your packets every "5-10 minutes". But you also say that you only need to reset your MAC every 2 days?
please go Home [digg.com]
Parent
Punishment enough (Score:5, Funny)
Punishment enough would be for the FCC to require Comcast to double the capacity of their network every 18 months.
Well, they deserve it. (Score:4, Interesting)
If you sell something you don't own (bandwidth), then it's your fault, not the buyers.
What's really needed is QoS. You get X MB per month of high quality, Y MB per month at medium quality and Z MB (maybe z=inf) at low quality, and a final unlimited lowest quality, throttled down to something quite small.
Your app sets the QoS level it wants (eg voip sets high quality). When you run out of the quality level set, traffic automatically gets demoted to the next one you have. Or, you can buy more a la carte.
the vote hasn't happened yet (Score:5, Informative)
"The Wall Street Journal reports tonight that commissioners Copps, Adelstein, and Martin have decided against the cable giant, paving the way for an official vote when the order is publicly voted on next Friday."
This ruling will never stand (Score:5, Funny)
All Comcast needs to do to get this overturned is find a judge that isn't a Comcast customer.
Re:alignment (Score:5, Insightful)
So whose side is the FCC on? they seem pretty two-faced to me.
Mmmmh... a contradictory double-sided bias.. what could it possibly mean... maybe... I don't know.. a lack of bias?
Parent
Re:alignment (Score:4, Insightful)
Indeed, the body of FCC commissioners is designed to be double-sided [wikipedia.org].
That said, I think it's pretty obvious that the commission makes biased decisions all the time. The Republican commissioners are almost always unified, and the Democrat commissioners seem to swing over to the "regulation is bad, m'kay" position a lot of the time.
Parent
Re:Finally!!! (Score:5, Informative)
That's not what this is about. Comcast was found by the FCC to be interfering in the traffic of specific application types, violating principles established by the FCC to allow customers open access to the Internet. The customers were not charged for the bits that were blocked, so it had nothing to do with bandwidth caps.
Parent
Re:Finally!!! (Score:4, Insightful)
That's not what this is about. Comcast was found by the FCC to be interfering in the traffic of specific application types, violating principles established by the FCC to allow customers open access to the Internet. The customers were not charged for the bits that were blocked, so it had nothing to do with bandwidth caps.
Ok, what? They were not charged for the blocked data? Are you nuts?
As a customer you are paying for XMb/sec download by yMb/sec upload on their network, not taking account of the fact that those speeds will be affected by traffic on other networks and the actual speed of the server, you still are paying for that bandwidth continuously.
If they are messing with your traffic and/or reducing your connection speeds on their network then they are not giving you the service you payed for. And they are violating federal law that prohibits ISPs from discriminating against data types.
It would be like the phone company blocking calls from an area that a lot of people call or intentionally reducing call quality to lower the number of calls from there.
Parent
Re:The Republicans are correct (Score:5, Insightful)
That said, I don't agree with a lot of what they do, and they do have considerable power, but power that's not unlike that of the EPA, the military, and so on.
So is the Comcast pending fine a good idea? You bet. Once the pandora's box of stepping on protocols to favor another is open, it can't be shut. This sends a great signal to carriers that they'd best not fool with consumer access. Be a good carrier; don't mess with protocols to favor your own perceived traffic. Controversial no doubt; a good one this time, IMHO.
Parent
Laws are legal. (Score:5, Insightful)
Isn't that convenient? The will of the people will be done, and the will of the people is that douchebag corporations don't abuse the people after being gifted billions of the peoples' tax dollars to build network infrastructure.
Parent
Re:The Republicans are correct (Score:4, Informative)
I'm going to assume for the moment that you do not have a legal education. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
The FCC is -- and should be -- both an enforcement and legislative arm of the Government. This is because it is an ADMINISTRATIVE body created by CONGRESS. Congress delegated [limited] rulemaking and ordermaking power to the FCC. That's not unusual: go look at the Enabling Acts of the other administrative agencies who handle a huge chunk of the rest of the way our Government functions. The Supreme Court has upheld the Constitutionality of agencies like the FCC again and again.
Now as to whether Net Neutrality is "already law", you would need to define what you mean by "law". Court made law? Statutes? Agency rules/orders? You do see the title of this, "FCC Votes to Punish Comcast" right? Guess what -- that's the action of the law. You may think the "law" is purely statutory, but then you'd be leaving out the Constitution, administrative bodies, common law, executive orders.
But hey, it's not surprising for me to see a subject line like "The Republicans Are Correct" spouted by someone who appears to know little about the law.
(Law student.)
Parent
Re:The Republicans are correct (Score:5, Informative)
The FCC can make law within the bounds of its enabling act. Rulemaking and orders have the force of law. The FCC can't pass a rule that forces ignorant people to actually learn about the law before they speak, but they can create an order to punish Comcast, and they can make rules regarding network neutrality. You can go read the enabling act at: http://law.onecle.com/uscode/47/151.html [onecle.com]
If it is arrogant to point out how wrong you are, then anyone with any education must seem arrogant to you. I guess that's the "liberal elite" hate we see from Republicans. Your statements are just as annoying as someone who comes to Slashdot apparently not knowing shit about computers, but still wants to talk like they do. Do yourself a favor and stop seeing knowledge as arrogance. It's not my job to coddle your ignorance.
And in regards to whether the "real legislature does not believe that network neutrality is existing law", there again you are clueless. Go read up on Antitrust law (tying), or the policy statement in section 230 of the CDA. Congress has been quite clear, throughout its history, that preserving competition is more important than preserving competitors, and that the Internet in particular deserves preservation as a free market.
Parent
Re:The Republicans are correct (Score:4, Insightful)
I AM a Republican and I'm on the FCC's side.
It's debatable whether or not Comcast's conduct was legal. They advertised and sold "internet access". That has certain connotations. If instead of the promised "Internet Access" they sold a neutered version thereof, then they may have run afoul of Federal regulations.
LK
Parent
Re:The Republicans are correct (Score:4, Informative)
"Regardless of your stand on Network Neutrality, the fact of the matter is that what Comcast did was absolutely legal."
I don't think that has been established. Actively forging packets may qualify as an act of impersonation, which might be considered illegal. This may or may not be the case, but I suggest that the legality of what Comcast did is not yet a 'fact'.
A.
Parent
Re:The Republicans are correct (Score:5, Informative)
It's not at all a stretch.. thats' why they call them "Forged Packets"
They *very clearly* do not come from the source that compcast pretends they come from.
Parent
Re:The Republicans are correct (Score:5, Insightful)
Is it not at least an equally huge, if not ridiculous, stretch to claim that it is "absolutely legal?"
Packet forging is rightly named---Comcast sends them as if they originated from me, when they did not. They do not advertise that they do it & I did not sign any document authorizing them to do it on my behalf. In fact, many AUPs prohibit forging and spoofing from their users & ISPs should be held to an even higher standard.
Parent
Re:The Republicans are correct (Score:5, Funny)
> Is it not at least an equally huge, if not ridiculous, stretch to claim that it is "absolutely legal?"
How about 'barely legal'?
Parent
Re:The Republicans are correct (Score:5, Insightful)
it's a huge, if not ridiculous, stretch to claim that forged packets are some sort of illegal impersonation.
So you won't mind if I send some mail and list yours as the return address then?
Parent
Tiered bandwidth is not the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Tiered or capped bandwidth is not the problem here. Net Neutrality is the problem.
The most fundamental way to distinguish between the two is that violations of Net Neutrality will lead to tying between different relevant markets, a critical Antitrust concern.
Tiered or capped bandwidth ALREADY EXISTS at Comcast, and has been around since the days of Compuserve and timeshared systems.
AT&T in the 1980s could charge you for every minute you were on the phone, but they sure as hell couldn't tell you that you could only call their preferred pizza delivery services. I hope you can see why that matters.
Parent
Re:It looks good, but its not. (Score:5, Informative)
"The government would never do anything to hurt a corporation."
Um, AT&T, Standard Oil, and a few other examples come to mind... plus, if you run a small business and have ever dealt with OSHA, you'll have plenty of other more modern examples ready.
While it's certainly true that the government supports corporate interests from time to time, it would behoove you to understand why it happens instead of making blanket assumptions.
Parent