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FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski recently gave a speech entitled Preserving a Free and Open Internet: A Platform for Innovation, Opportunity, and Prosperity, outlining the basis and benefits of net neutrality, and what the FCC will do to protect it. Download the full transcript here.
In the artful words of the Chairman, preserving the innovation fostered by net neutrality is something no one should be neutral about.
I am now officially a fan of the Federal Communications Commission. No, really, I just signed up on their Facebook fan page. Just as Obama launched Recovery.gov to monitor how tax dollars are spent on his stimulus package, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski launches OpenInternet.gov to rally support for Net neutrality.
This is sheer genius. After all, who would speak out for an open Internet more vocally than Internet users themselves? Complaints about throttling ISPs will become that much louder when they’re in the comments section of a government site.
As announced during the the Consumer Electronics Show 2008 in Las Vegas, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will be probing US cable provider Comcast for allegedly restricting traffic to file-sharing services such as BitTorrent.
The bone of contention is net neutrality or equal treatment of all data regardless of its content, source or destination.
As expected, the company has denied the allegations and claimed that its bandwidth management technology might have slowed down the transfer of files. Moreover, it promised to cooperate with the regulator to straighten matters out.
“We believe our practices are in accordance with the FCC’s policy statement on the Internet, where the Commission clearly recognized that reasonable network management is necessary for the good of all customers,” said David Cohen, a Comcast executive vice president, in a news article.