FCC To Slap Comcast…. Or Not

I just noticed this piece over at news.com which seems to indicate that the FCC is none too pleased about Comcast and their packet shaping activities. As a result, they are toying with the idea of doing something about it. Kevin Martin who is the head honcho over at the FCC said the following recently:

“A hallmark of what should be seen as a reasonable business practice is certainly whether or not the people engaging in that practice are willing to describe it publicly,”

If you’ve followed this story, Comcast wouldn’t admit to their packet shaping activities until the Associated Press proved that they were doing it. So it comes as no surprise that the FCC might take a dim view of that. The problem is, what can they truly do about it. The story points out that there are no net-neutrality laws on the books at the moment and the FCC’s own net-neutrality principles are not legally binding. Still, the Comcast circus might be enough to get the U.S. house and senate to pass some net-neutrality laws to stop this from happening in the future. In some ways, that might be worse (for Comcast and other ISP’s) then anything the FCC could/might do.

Perhaps someone with a legal background would be kind enough to leave a comment about what the FCC can do to Comcast. I’m sure we’d all like to gain some insight on this issue.

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