The IT Nerd

You know, I have to admit that sometimes you get blindsided. That’s how I feel as the news that Comcast is appealing the FCC ruling that keeps them from messing with filesharing traffic. Richard Korman of ZDNet received a message from Comcast along with a statement from David L. Cohen, Executive Vice President of Comcast:

“Although we are seeking review and reversal of the Commission’s network management order in federal court, we intend to comply fully with the requirements established in that order, which essentially codify the voluntary commitments that we have already announced, and to continue to act in accord with the Commission’s Internet Policy Statement. Thus, we intend to make the required filings and disclosures, and we will follow through on our longstanding commitment to transition to protocol-agnostic network congestion management practices by the end of this year. We also remain committed to bringing our customers a superior Internet experience.

We filed this appeal in order to protect our legal rights and to challenge the basis on which the Commission found that Comcast violated federal policy in the absence of pre-existing legally enforceable standards or rules. We continue to recognize that the Commission has jurisdiction over Internet service providers and may regulate them in appropriate circumstances and in accordance with appropriate procedures. However, we are compelled to appeal because we strongly believe that, in this particular case, the Commission’s action was legally inappropriate and its findings were not justified by the record.”

This pretty much proves what I said in this post some time ago. The FCC has no way to punish Comcast, and their order is not legally enforcable. The only thing that surprises me is that it took Comcast this long to call them on it. Of course Comcast is covering themselves just in case the appeal doesn’t go their way by continuing to implement everything that the order calls for them to do. But one has to think that this FCC order is about to get deep sixed.

Everybody’s favorite ISP Comcast has confirmed that it will continue to throttle service for its heaviest users during periods of congestion. Basically, the plan is that they will take action against specific users by significantly reducing their transfer rate for up to 20 minutes as opposed to throttling everything:

“The new system will move away from a focus on specific applications that hog Web traffic, [Comcast senior vice president and general manager of online services Mitch] Bowling said. Comcast will determine “in nearly real time” whether congestion is caused by a heavy user, he said.

“If in fact a person is generating enough packets that they’re the ones creating that situation, we will manage that consumer for the overall good of all of our consumers,” Bowling said.”

Of course they’re doing this in response to the half assed FCC ruling that came out not too long ago. The new system, reportedly dubbed “fair share” should be in place by the end of 2008.

You’ll excuse me if I don’t jump up and down for joy as Comcast is still employing throttling at the end of the day. But I guess the devil is in the details, so we’ll have to wait and see just what those details are. Then we can decide if Comast has made an brilliant move, or a Comcastic move.

This document (Warning: PDF) just appeared on the FCC site a few minutes ago. It is 67 pages long, but what it tells Comcast to do is in the following paragraph:

“Disclose the details of their unreasonable network management practices, submit a compliance plan describing how it intends to stop these unreasonable management practices by the end of the year, and disclose to both the Commission and the public the details of the network management practices that it intends to deploy following termination of its current practices.”

Great. Excecpt for a whole bunch of things:

1. The FCC order doesn’t actually punish Comcast in any way.
2. It doesn’t force them to do anything they didn’t plan to do after this story hit the media.
3. It may not even be enforceable in court.
4. Comcast continues to use forged packets to throttle upstream P2P traffic and will continue to do so until the end of the year.

I must be missing something here because I can’t see what purpose this order serves. Perhaps someone will enlighten me.

The FCC held its en banc hearings into Net Neutrality on Thursday at Stanford University. Oddly, Comacast was a no show at this hearing. Perhaps it’s because they didn’t want to answer questions about the stunt that they pulled at the last round of hearings where they tried to put people into seats to keep out their opponents? Who knows. But it was a good hearing because you got a lot of viewpoints on both sides of the issue. For example, Robb Topolski, the software engineer who ignited controversy around Comcast’s disruption of BitTorrent peer-to-peer traffic, made BitTorrent users everywhere happy by giving his side of the story:

“Consumers were harmed when (Comcast) decided it would do something secretive and non-standard on the Internet,” Topolski said, referring to Internet service provider’s use of so-called reset tags to disrupt the transfer of large files from BitTorrent. The situation continues today. It has not stopped, despite all the wonderful agreements between BitTorrent and Comcast. I’m a ham radio operator. And Comcast is jamming authorized communication (on the Internet). I ask that before you leave today you signal your intent to stop these interferences.”

Meanwhile Rick Carnes of Songwriters Guild of America said that ISPs should be able to manage traffic on their networks and filter the transfer of pirated content:

“If regulation is to be considered, which we hope it isn’t, than illegal file-sharing should be at the top of the agenda.”

Gee. That sounds a bit like “Big Brother” does it not?

The quote I like is the one from FCC Commissioner Michael Copps:

“While we’re debating, the industry is using that time to decide on what will be the future of the Internet.”

That my friends is 100% true. Time to start doing something.

It looks like the FCC is going to have a second look at the Net Neutrality issue. According to this post, the FCC has scheduled a new round of network neutrality & traffic shaping public hearings at Stanford on April 17. This is interesting as the FCC had denied that were going to do that not to long ago. Perhaps Comcast’s absolutely Comcastic stunt of hiring people to fill the seats in the last hearing made the FCC reconsider? Who knows. But it’s a good thing for anyone who is in favor of Network Neutrality.

One tip: Arrive early to get yourself a seat just in case Comcast has any evil ideas. 

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.

Comcast went in front of the FCC the other day and apparently tried to limit how much backlash that it would get from public by hiring “seat holders” to take up space that should have gone to the public. Comcast at first admitted to hiring people, but only to hold seats for their employees. Then when it was pointed out that not only did these “seat holders” not know what they were there for, and they were there from the wee hours of the morning, but they were still there when the FCC hearing started. Only then did Comcast fess up with the truth:

“Comcast spokeswoman Sena Fitzmaurice said it hired seat-holders only after an advocacy group called Free Press urged its backers to attend.

“For the past week, the Free Press has engaged in a much more extensive campaign to lobby people to attend the hearing on its behalf,” Philadelphia-based Comcast said in a statement.””

So, Comcast is afraid of having dissenting opinions about it’s packet shaping practices, and because of that it pulls stunts like this. One hopes that the FCC spanks them silly. That would be Comcastic.