FCC boss Kevin Martin spoke before Congress today in a hearing on network neutrality, with the primary topic of conversation being Comcast's throttling of BitTorrent traffic. Martin repeated his belief that new laws weren't necessary to maintain neutral networks. However, with Comcast all but promising a lawsuit should the FCC punish them, Democratic Senators continue to wonder if tougher standards are necessary.
Consumers must be fully informed about the exact nature of the service they are purchasing and any potential limitations associated with that service. -FCC Boss Kevin Martin |
For now, Martin insists he has it all under control. A lot depends on how Comcast follows through on their promise to employ "protocol agnostic" traffic management by the end of the year. Martin's
statement (pdf) before Congress showed his primary focus remains on carriers being transparent with their customers about traffic management:
quote:
Consumers must be fully informed about the exact nature of the service they are purchasing and any potential limitations associated with that service. For example, has the consumer been informed that certain applications used to watch video will not work properly when there is high congestion?
If the FCC acts against Comcast, it will likely be in the form of a small fine for the cable giant's failure to come clean about their network limitations. Since coming under investigation by the FCC, Comcast is doing everything in its power to derail any serious new laws, in the last few weeks promising to stop targeting BitTorent (which they're still doing), promoting their embrace of
P4P technology (which accelerates non-pirated P2P), and proposing a "
P2P bill of rights" (a generally empty gesture aimed at protecting their right to at least block pirated P2P transfers).Thus far, most of this is empty posturing aimed at dodging regulation and countering bad press. Comcast technically is doing nothing different than they were when this debate began -- but you'll notice a general theme developing: they are trying to get approval to throttle P2P traffic if it's pirated (the not so secret growth engine of this industry). Martin even made the distinction in today's statement before Congress:
quote:
The Commission should consider whether the network management practices are intended to distinguish between legal and illegal activity. The Commission’s network principles only recognize and protect user’s access to legal content. The sharing of illegal content, such as child pornography or content that does not have the appropriate copyright, is not protected by our principles. Similarly, applications that are intended to harm the network are not protected.
While piracy filters don't work well yet and can often be bested by encryption -- it's not hard to envision a future where ISPs throttle only the transfer of unauthorized copyrighted content. As for throttling legitimate competing content, whether bad press and small FCC fines are enough to keep ISPs on their best behavior remains to be seen.