Maybe The FCC Can Handle The Truth

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[Commentary] A couple of days ago, we asked the question whether the Federal Communications Commission was up for confronting the reality of Comcast’s blocking and throttling of peer-to-peer traffic and, if so, what the Commission would do about it. Now it appears as if the FCC is preparing to take some action against Comcast. FCC Chairman Kevin Martin made his announcement in dramatic fashion at a Senate Commerce Committee hearing. He wasn’t on the original agenda to testify. Martin’s staff contacted the Committee the afternoon before the April 22 hearing and asked if he could testify. Martin wanted to a big forum for a big announcement, and he made the most of it. In his written testimony, Chairman Martin set out a case against Comcast and, by implication, other service providers which are engaging in the same practice of falsely interfering with consumer traffic. The general principle Martin identified is whether a network management practice selectively or arbitrarily targets particular applications or types of content. If so, he said, then the Commission should look at the event with “heightened scrutiny” to make sure there is a “compelling interest” in what the network operator is doing.
http://www.publicknowledge.org/node/1536


Maybe The FCC Can Handle The Truth