In the wake of the FCC's Hearing held at Stanford last Thursday, and Chairman Martin's testimony yesterday before the Senate, it's hard to be muster much hope for the future of the internet. Symptoms of of accelerating decline - from a free-wheeling barely-legal commonwealth to something more like network TV - are beginning to appear. These sores are made all the more painful in light of the promise that the internet seems to hold - if it remains a public good and not private property - to put the power to express, organize productive activities and waste time at work into the hands of the many.
The Bad
I'm saying things are bad because of what I saw last Thursday at the hearing. Comcast, as some off you may know, promised not to block or degrade traffic on its internet service. This was back in 2006. Another interesting thing happened that same year...
Comcast started blocking and degrading P2P traffic.
This isn't just bad. It's really bad. P2P is a technology that allows innovative individuals to provide services on the internet that used to be impossible without server farms and deals with companies that optimize internet load times - two things that are extremely expensive. P2P allows all the users that love the widget that you invented to provide the processing power and bandwidth that our imaginary widget needs to function. It's like a co-op. SO when Comcast blocks P2P services that provide innovators a way to compete with Comcast... that's very serious.
Jason Devitt put the threat quite succinctly in his testimony:
2 comments:
what's a shill?
someone who gives praise for profit
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