Newsgroup: it.politica
Titolo: Questo non piacerà al ebreo: 'F.C.C. Chief Would Bar Comcast From Imposing Web Restrictions'

Federal regulators are prepared to take action against sellers of Internet
access that want to restrict what their customers can do online.
Kevin J. Martin, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, said
Friday that Comcast, the nation's largest cable company, should be
sanctioned because it had interfered with the Internet connections of users
who were exchanging files with other people.
Mr. Martin's recommendation is a strong push for network neutrality, the
idea that Internet access providers like Comcast should not be allowed to
favor some uses of their networks over others. Internet companies like
Google and free speech advocates have backed this approach.
The cable and phone companies that provide most of the nation's Internet
service have argued that such rules were not needed. They have said that
they should be free to run their networks as they see fit, and that there
had been no cases of problems with such discrimination.
Comcast's practice of slowing the use of BitTorrent, a method of trading
video, music and software files, provides such a case. The practice was
intended to prevent frequent file-swappers from clogging up the company's
network.
Under Mr. Martin's recommendation, which would need to be approved by the
full commission, Comcast would not be fined. But it would be forced to
change its practices and give the commission more details on what it did in
the past.
Mr. Martin wants to set a standard that will make it difficult for an
Internet provider to discriminate against users based on what they want to
do online.
"The Internet is based upon the idea that consumers can go anywhere they
want and access any content they want," Mr. Martin said in an interview.
"When they show they are blocking access to some sort of content, they have
the burden to show that what they are doing is reasonable."
Mr. Martin also said Comcast did not explain to its customers what it was
doing. "If they are going to put limits on individual customers if you use a
certain amount of bandwidth per month or per hour, they have to be willing
to tell their customers more about how it works," he said.
But Mr. Martin said the issue went beyond simple disclosure because
Comcast's
approach was not tightly related to the problem it said it was trying to
solve. For example, BitTorrent users who were not exchanging large files
were also blocked.
Mr. Martin said that the commission wanted to protect legal activities, and
that the rules would not apply to an Internet service that tried to block
the unauthorized transmission of copyrighted material or child pornography.
Comcast argues that its approach is legitimate, and that the commission does
not have the authority to impose any sanctions.
"We believe that the network management technique we chose at the time was
reasonable," said Sena Fitzmaurice, a Comcast spokeswoman. She added that
Comcast had already said it planned to change its approach to dealing with
heavy use. It is developing a system that will slow the Internet connections
of people who are moving large amounts of data at busy times.
Ms. Fitzmaurice was nonetheless concerned about Mr. Martin's approach. She
asked: "Does this create some broader precedent or authority for the F.C.C.
that would be asserted in other cases?"
She said that if the action was approved by the commission, the company
would have to examine the order before deciding whether to appeal.
Spokesmen for Time Warner Cable and Verizon, two other large providers of
Internet access, concurred that their preferences would be for the
commission to limit its scope to ensuring that providers properly disclose
their practices to their customers.
Some advocates of network neutrality are hoping that the commission uses
this case to establish a broader principle.
"The normative message is that it is wrong to block the Internet," said Tim
Wu, a professor at Columbia Law School who is the chairman of Free Press, an
advocacy group that filed the complaint about Comcast for which Mr. Martin
is proposing a resolution.
"The deeper message he's sending here is that users are sovereign. If two
people want to send a file between each other, the carriers are not to get
in the way."
Professor Wu said the issues at stake go back to the common-law concept of a
common carrier, which defined certain businesses - from blacksmiths to
ferries - as so essential to commerce that their owners could not
discriminate against any paying customer.
These ancient concerns are increasingly relevant to the Internet as an
ever-greater share of commerce is conducted online. Companies that sell
products or offer content over the Internet have worried that without
regulation, the Internet access providers might chose to offer better and
faster service to some companies - perhaps those that pay for preferred
treatment - than to others.
Many are particularly concerned that cable and phone companies, which are in
the pay television business, will choose to inhibit the growth of free video
over the Internet from sites like YouTube, which is owned by Google.
"If it turned out that the system accidentally or deliberately discriminated
against online television, that would be anticompetitive because online
television competes with Comcast," said Marvin Ammori, the general counsel
of Free Press.
Other Internet experts say that Comcast is simply trying to compensate for
the limited capacity of its network. On Internet connections delivered over
cable systems, there is much more capacity for users to receive information
than to send it, so uploading large files can quickly overwhelm the sending
capacity.
Some are concerned that if Mr. Martin presses these rules, the Internet
providers will move away from offering unlimited Internet service. Already
Time Warner is testing a system that would impose significant caps on how
much its users could download.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/12/technology/12comcast.html?em&ex=1216008000&en=afcd34c6cde24d9e&ei=5087%0A
-- 
Give us back our countries: Stop the criminal multiculturalism ideology
enforced upon the white world against the will of its peoples, leading to
mass immigration from the third-world: Mul-cul + pol-corr = lethal mixture
for the white world. And give us back our freedom: Dismantle all
surveillance technology.

A. They were afraid of the other side.
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Wer ist Michael AKA Helicopter Michi Laudahn?
Ein Sozialabzocker und Asylant da in Dänemark....
UseNet Spammer, Nazi, mehr scheinst du Wixer nicht zu sein.
<> --
<> Proudly introducing the concept of HATE to the World
 <> 'Freedom of speech - abuse it and then ban it!
The above is an except from Helicopter Michi's membership application
sent to the Danish Branch of the Grand United European Neo and
Traditional Nazi Boys Club.
Ördög (Your scary shadow that says "Boo" in the dark)
Either the neocons go or civilisation does!
Deppen crossposterei beendet, fup wie es gehört!