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Cable, Telco Interests Sit Out Net Neutrality Hearing

Comcast leaves field to neutrality supporters

By Martin H. Bosworth
ConsumerAffairs.Com

April 20, 2008 

While the previous hearing, held in Cambridge, Massachusetts in February, was marred by Comcast's controversial tactic of paying people off the street to fill seats and block opponents from getting in, the second hearing was marked by an absence of representatives from cable and telecom companies alike, giving freer reign to speakers like Ben Scott of media watchdog group Free Press.

"There are two competing visions for the future of the Internet -- open versus closed. Will we embrace the openness that has shaped the Internet to the present day?" Scott asked. "Or will we permit network owners to move to the closed systems of content control we have had with cable television and broadcasting? It is not hyperbole to say that few choices in the history of the FCC carry as much weight as this one does."

Several of the FCC commissioners attending were sympathetic to Scott's view.

Democratic member Michael Copps, in his testimony,, said "that wonderful, open and dynamic Internet — perhaps the most liberating technology since the printing press, if not even greater than that — is, in fact, under threat.  Its future is not on autopilot and, indeed, powerful interests would bring it under their control for their own purposes — which may not be your purposes."

Other members of the Commssion were more wary.

Republican Deborah Tate used her testimony to warn that unfettered file-sharing networks could lead to greater spreading of child pornography over the Internet.

"I want to make sure that we weigh the unintended consequences of any regulatory action we may take regarding more openness with these successful voluntary steps to use not just reasonable but extraordinary network management and technologies to fight crime rather than harbor and encourage it," she said.

Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig, a longtime net neutrality advocate, testified that the economic gains reaped from the Internet were due in no small part to its openness. He encouraged the commissioners to adopt rules to ensure beneficial participation for carriers.

“You have to make it so playing the games is not a good business model for them,” Lessig said. “If we really didn’t have a reason to worry that they were playing games [with network management], then what they did inside their networks would be of less concern.”

Comcast's long shadow

Although Comcast declined to appear at the hearing, its actions loomed large over the course of the discussion. It was the discovery that Comcast was blocking access to BitTorrent that reignited the net neutrality debate, leading to lawsuits against the cable giant and a promised investigation by the FCC. 

In an attempt to deflect the investigation before it got underway, Comcast and BitTorrent struck an agreement that the file-sharing company would work with Comcast to develop processes to manage Internet networks without blocking access.

More recently, Comcast and Pando, another company that markets peer-to-peer (P2P) software, announced that they had collaborated to create a "P2P Bill Of Rights and Responsibilities" that would "clarify what choices and controls consumers should have when using P2P applications as well as what processes and practices ISPs should use to manage P2P applications running on their networks."

Consumer activist groups and technology experts were skeptical of Comcast's friendlier stance.

Public Knowledge's Gigi Sohn called the Comcast-Pando agreement "ludicrous," adding, "This so-called agreement is simply another way for Comcast to try to evade punishment for its blocking and degrading of peer-to-peer services for its customers. As with the ‘agreement’ with BitTorrent, today’s announcement is long on rhetoric and short on detail."

Even with the conciliatory gestures of Comcast and other big players in the network space, the BitTorrent scandal led to renewed Congressional hearings discussing right of equal access to Internet content, and the introduction of new legislation to add net neutrality to the Communications Act of 1934 as a guiding principle, while mandating the FCC to investigate any claims of blocked access.

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