Hope, indignation, and outrage greeted the Federal Communications Commission's enactment of sanctions against Comcast for throttling P2P applications. Much of the response came before today's ruling, following FCC Chair Kevin Martin's disclosure last week of the impending decision.
A "historic test," complainant Free Press called the move. "If the commission decisively rules against Comcast, it will be a remarkable victory for organized people over organized money." Today's decision confirmed the advocacy group's hopes. "Defying every ounce of conventional wisdom in Washington, every-day people have taken on a major corporation and won an historic precedent for an open Internet."
Jay Monahan
Jay Monahan, General Counsel of Vuze, told Ars yesterday that when the hi-res video content company filed its net neutrality petition, he didn't expect the explosion of passionate support that followed. "When I saw the thousands of submissions to the Commission by consumers and the standing room only FCC field hearings that we attended and in some cases testified at, that part surprised me," Monahan confided in an interview. "That there were that many people paying this much attention to this."
The FCC's action may also be a global precedent. Ars asked Columbia law professor Tim Wu whether any other country has taken similar steps. It's a tricky call, he responded, because, unlike the United States, some countries have retained their common carrier powers over the Internet.
"However, in terms of enforcement, this is a first in the world as far as I know," Wu said.
Comcast and its allies
Meanwhile, Comcast, the recipient of today's punitive FCC Order, has been serving up a steady stream of clenched jaw rhetoric. "The Commission's order raises significant due process concerns and a variety of substantial legal questions," the company warned today. "We are considering all our legal options and are disappointed that the commission rejected our attempts to settle this issue without further delays."
The rest of the cable industry has resolutely stood by Comcast's side. On Tuesday, a senior VP of Time Warner cable met with the FCC, warning that "government intrusion into broadband providers' traffic management practices would have a chilling effect on investment and innovation." Four days earlier, the National Cable and Telecommunications Association sent the agency a chart of the network management practices of the nation's top colleges and universities. "If there is to be regulation, therefore, it must apply equally to all providers," NCTA's filing grimly advised.
But the undisguised outrage has come from the hardcore right, which views with horror the spectacle of Republican FCC Chair Martin delivering what it sees as the broadband equivalent of the Fairness Doctrine. The Wall Street Journal's editorial writers—who must surely sign a pact never to read the newspaper's excellent articles about telecommunications—lambasted Martin on Wednesday as a self-appointed "Master of the Media Universe," a chump for Moveon.org, and worse.
"Mr. Martin is also greasing the skids for a potential Barack Obama Administration to take an Internet industrial policy who knows where," the Journal warned. Ditto, declared House Republican Minority leader John Boehner, who the next day sent an angry letter to Martin, denouncing his efforts to "hijack the evolution of the Internet to everyone's detriment."
One senses in these frantic protests legitimate fears that Martin's move represents yet another sign that these are the End Days of the Reagan Era. It is very unlikely that the FCC's 42-year-old chief parties with the Free Press crowd. But with today's ruling, he has clearly sided not just with the FCC's "two Democrats," as the Journal bitterly calls them, but with a younger, technology-loving generation that sees government as an ally rather than The Problem.
Net neutrality isn't a slippery slope
In Ars' interview with Jay Monahan, the attorney bristled at the Wall Street Journal's insistence that "net neutrality is a slippery slope toward interventions of all kinds." It is the opposite, he insisted. "What Martin has proposed, and what the Commission is about to do, is exactly designed to protect innovation, and to protect competition," Monahan argued. "If net neutrality means anything, it means not that each of us is made equal in the marketplace, but that at least we have an equal set of rules that are transparent to all of us in order to compete."
Nobody, least of all Vuze, thinks this fight is over. Monahan says he fully expects Comcast to "appeal the Commission's order"—which means a lawsuit against the FCC, a Congressional counterattack, or both. Still, he sees today as a day to celebrate.
"We do view this as a first step," Monahan concluded. "A first step towards helping to build an open and free Internet. And we're grateful to the Commission for having the courage to adopt this order so that we can move forward and go back to our Palo Alto office and continue to compete in this marketplace."
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