In a 3-2 ruling this morning out in California the FCC ruled against Comcast in one of the first (if not the first) rulings of its kind by a government regulator body.
While there are concerns that the FCC even is involved (could this lead to future regulation and restrictions. This is yet to be seen.) this is a good step for those of us desiring a free and open Internet.
Wired Magazine | Silicon Alley Insider coverage of the ruling.
Some notable quotes:
From the FCC Statement:
Comcast’s practices are not minimally intrusive, as the company claims, but rather are invasive and have significant effects. The commission found that Comcast monitors its customers’ connections using deep packet inspection and then determines how it will route some connections based not on their destinations but on their contents. In essence, Comcast opens its customers’ mail because it wants to deliver mail not based on the address on the envelope but on the type of letter contained therein.
Comcast may have interfered with up to three-quarters of all peer-to-peer connections in certain communities. The commission concluded that the end result of Comcast’s conduct was the blocking of internet traffic, which had the effect of substantially impeding consumers’ ability to access the content and to use the applications of their choice.
From Comcast after the Ruling:
Comcast spokesman Sena Fitzmaurice said the company was “gratified that the commission did not find any conduct by Comcast that justified a fine.” He said the company did not throttle traffic.
Reading the Statement from FCC above is very scary, that an ISP is reading everything coming to your account. Could they be storing this information, such as credit card information or sensitive company documents.
Unfortunately there was not a fine involved, it would have sent a louder message to all the ISPs out there. For the time being Net Neutrality is still standing here in the USA
*Sigh of Relief*
On Tuesday this week (3/3/09) President Obama nominated Julius Genachowski as new Chairman for the FCC. While normally this would be of little importance or interest to the Church this time around it should be. With the issue of Net Neutrality (allowing companies to charge for bandwidth placement) that could potentially destroy the ability of any ministry to have a dynamic website.