Excerpt:
The chairman of the Federal Communications Commission yesterday sharply questioned Internet service providers who control consumers' Web access over their networks, and suggested the agency could intervene against the practice.Comment: Good for Martin and Markey! I hope they continue to view net neutrality as a consumer right, and act to protect those rights.
Kevin J. Martin made his remarks at an unusual off-site hearing to address complaints that cable provider Comcast restricts the flow of content -- such as video and music clips -- through file-sharing service BitTorrent. Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on telecommunications and the Internet and a proponent of so-called net neutrality rules barring online traffic controls, offered opening remarks. "While carriers will assert the need to manage networks in their current state of evolution, we need to remember that Internet freedoms are most properly thought of as consumer-centric," he said.
Net neutrality is also important to maintain an open environment that allows innovation, while this technology is new and growing, Doing so is important to our economy, and to our political and cultural systems.
I can imagine situations in which a provider might reasonably have to deviate from net neutrality (e.g. an earthquake knocks out some of the cables, and some management needs to be done to assure service to critical customers such as government and hospitals until the system can be repaired; a terrorist is surrounded in a building and the government asks that he be denied Internet access until apprehended). But I would hope that the FCC would police this authority carefully to assure that service providers not abuse it. JAD
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