[ NNSquad ] FCC Hearing tomorrow (Monday, 25-02-2008)

[Brett Glass <brett@lariat.net>]

All:

Readers of this list might be interested in listening to an unusual public en
banc hearing being held by the FCC Commissioners tomorrow in Boston. (For
Bostonians who want to attend, the hearing is at the Harvard Law School's
Austin Hall at 1515 Mass Ave and starts at 11 AM. It's also being Webcast, but
as audio only.)

The hearing concerns petitions by Vuze, Inc. and Free Press asking the FCC to
regulate the Internet and ISPs. In its petition, Vuze has asked the FCC to
prohibit de-prioritization or throttling of P2P protocols such as BitTorrent.
(BitTorrent, Inc. is represented on one of the panels later in the hearing.)
Free Press' petition goes still further; it asks the FCC to declare traffic
management of any kind to be "discrimination" and to ban it.

The agenda and list of speakers are at

http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-280373A1.pdf

Careful readers are likely to note that the two sides of the debate are not
equally represented. Vuze is given the opportunity to make a "technology
demonstration," but opponents of the petitions have not been allocated time
for a similar presentation. Also, of the speakers and panelists, proponents of
the petitions outnumber opponents by roughly 2 to 1. While the motivations
behind this are unclear, one can only hope that it does not betray a bias on
the part of the Chairman (who has made several recent moves unfavorable to
cable providers such as Comcast, whose throttling of BitTorrent motivated the
petitions) and won't lead to the making of bad policy.

--Brett Glass

   [ Do we know for a fact that the opponents of the petitions even *asked*
     for technical presentation time?  If they did and were refused, that's a
     story.  If they didn't request such time, then that's their decision.

     Similarly, is there any indication that opponents of the petitions
     who wished to participate were refused?  Or perhaps is it simply
     the case that twice as many proponents signed up?  

         -- Lauren Weinstein
            NNSquad Moderator ]