http://www.pff.org/issues-pubs/pops/2010/pop17.9-constructive_alternative.pdf
This article published by The Progress and Freedom Foundation is an overview and criticism of the FCC's recent action regarding Net Neutrality. It argues that the plans the FCC has laid out are really just the same thing we have now, but in disguise. It also mentions the court decision between the FCC and Comcast, in which the court ruled that the FCC did not have the authority to punish Comcast for its anti net neutrality actions, which is a problematic precedent if the FCC is ever going to protect net neutrality.
http://www.cadc.uscourts.gov/internet/opinions.nsf/EA10373FA9C20DEA85257807005BD63F/$file/08-1291-1238302.pdf
This is the DC Court of Appeals decision of Comcast v. FCC. It describes the issue that the Court is considering and the decision they reach. In 2007, a few Comcast users noticed that their bandwidth was being throttled while using peer to peer file sharing programs, most prominently in this case, Bit torrent. They discovered that Comcast was intentionally slowing their internet connection down because they were using a disproportionate amount of bandwidth on the Comcast network. This practice is fundamentally against the idea of net neutrality because Comcast was discriminating against specific internet traffic that it did not want on its network. In response, complaints were filed with the FCC, who told Comcast to stop. Comcast filed an appeal and the court ruled in their favor.
Both of these sources were found through Google Advance Search. The search term was "net neutrality" and the results were limited to show only .pdf results.
2 comments:
I think you're right about the precedent issue set by the Supreme Court in the Comcast vs. FCC case. It's definitely going to be a huge issue for advocates of net neutrality in the future, and something we need to address in our project as it's very significant. Everything considered, it looks like net neutrality is more of a business issue than one might expect.
It seems that Comcast has definitely been dishonest about the regulation of their bandwidth allotted to certain users. The big question is whether or not their actions are lawful.
I am surprised that Comcast would be fighting so hard on an issue that so many, perhaps all, of its customers are against. In my opinion, the free market will prevail in the end and if Net Neutrality doesn't become legal obligation, a new ISP will rise with the mission of net neutrality and take all of Comcast's customers. What the customers want will ultimately always prevail because they are the ones keeping these businesses alive.
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