The Federal Communications Commission's hearing at Stanford Thursday was a chance for the public to vent frustrations at Comcast's and other Internet service  providers' network -management practices, but -- unlike at a similar hearing in February -- the ISPs were not around to listen.
FCC Chairman Kevin J. Martin explained that the commission several weeks ago invited Comcast, AT&T , Time Warner and Cable Labs, but they all declined to attend. Martin reached out again to Comcast last week after it announced plans for a P2P "Bill of Rights and Responsibilities."
In the absence of the ISPs, the commissioners more clearly outlined their thinking on Net neutrality, even as some speakers blamed the FCC for creating the problem.
Need for Clear Rules
"We are here facing these problems because of a failure of FCC policy," said Stanford Law Professor Lawrence Lessig. "The FCC has failed to make it absolutely clear that network owners, if they're building the Internet, have to make it absolutely open."
Martin hinted the FCC might fashion an order to regulate if and how ISPs can throttle Internet traffic. He said ISPs must adequately disclose their practices and should not discriminate on an application or protocol basis.
"There must be adequate disclosure by the network operators of the particular traffic-management tools being used," Martin said, "not only to consumers," but "to the designers of various applications and to entrepreneurs."
Action Likely
He also warned against "arbitrary blocking or degrading of a particular application." Martin said, "As we move into an era in which network operators are taking particular actions against individual applications or content, we need to evaluate those under stricter sets of scrutiny to make sure that whatever actions they're taking are actually furthering a legitimate purpose, and that their actions are narrowly tailored to serving that legitimate purpose."
It's likely that the FCC will take action, said Craig Aaron, spokesperson for Free Press, a pro-Net neutrality advocacy group, in a telephone interview Friday. "Based on all of (Martin's) public statements, it seems he's taking Comcast's violation very seriously. I do expect to see the FCC take action soon, and I think they have to," Aaron said.
Martin may not go as far as the Democratic commissioners would like, however. Commissioner Michael Copps called for the FCC to embrace a firm policy against ISPs discriminating against certain kinds of traffic. (continued...)
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