FCC Hearing tomorrow (Monday, 25-02-2008)

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

________________________________________
From: Brett Glass [brett () lariat net]
Sent: Sunday, February 24, 2008 5:42 PM
To: David Farber; Ip ip
Subject: For IP: FCC Hearing tomorrow (Monday, 25-02-2008)

Dave:

Readers of IP 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 won't lead to the making of bad policy.

--Brett Glass


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