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Stop the Blocking, Feds to Tell Comcast

A little less than a year after Comcast was caught faking internet traffic to limit its customers’ peer-to-peer file sharing, government regulators are looking to censure the company for violating government open internet principles, according to Kevin Martin, the head of the Federal Communications Commission.

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For its part, Comcast says its policies are already changing and that the FCC doesn’t have the authority to tell it how to manage its broadband network, which has 14 million subscribers.

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Martin, a Republican, intends to circulate an order to that effect among the other four commissioners Friday, in hopes that a majority of the commission will approve it in the agency’s August 1 meeting. Martin will likely be joined by Democratic commissioners Michael Copps and Jonathan Adelstein.

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The order would mark a significant victory for those who want the federal government to force Internet providers to keep their pipes unfiltered and would almost certainly set up a legal showdown with Comcast, which contends that the FCC’s open internet principles are not enforceable since they never went through the proper regulatory channels. It would mark the first time that federal regulators dictated how large ISPs manage their networks, and comes at a time where ISPs are experimenting with ways to be more than internet utility companies. Those attempts to find new forms of revenue have raised security issues and implicated wiretapping law.

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“Comcast’s actions in this instance violated our principles,” Martin told the Associated Press Thursday.

Martin’s statement came months after the non-profit activist groups Public Knowledge and Free Press filed an official complaint, months of filings to the FCC and two contentious public hearings, including one where Comcast crowded out activists with paid seat holders and another at Stanford where none of the large ISPs sent a representative.

Backers of so-called net neutrality, such as general counsel Marvin Ammori of Free Press, greeted the AP story with cautious optimism.

“This is an historic test for whether the law will protect the open Internet.” Ammori said. “If the commission decisively rules against Comcast, it will be a remarkable victory for organized people over organized money.”

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Not surprisingly, Comcast denied that its attempts to control bandwidth usage violated anyone’s rights and that the FCC has no current authority over ISP network management pratices, according to Comcast spokeswoman Sena Fitzmaurice.

Some technologists accuse Net Neutrality backers of pushing for rules that would hamper technological advances. Treating every packet the same would prevent ISPs from engaging in smart network management practices, such speeding up online phone call traffic to prevent jittery calls.

“The Commission has never before provided any guidance on what it means by ‘reasonable network management,’” Fitzmaurice said. “Comcast does not block any Internet content, application, or service.”

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Although Comcast refuses to speak openly about how it throttles hungry peer-to-peer file services, independent tests show that Comcast networks send fake stop signals to file sharing programs that are uploading. Faking RST packets is a technique often used by repressive regimes to block citizens from viewing black-listed websites.

Comcast says that it only “delays” a small percentage of the massive amounts of peer-to-peer file sharing traffic on its network.

ISPs will fight to keep the order as narrowly tailored to Comcast’s particular techniques, and Comcast is likely to challenge any order in court, according to Art Brodsky, a spokesman for the Open Internet Coalition.

“If the FCC follows through, this is a good first step and sends a message to the industry,” Brodsky said. “But obviously there will be legal challenges so the ultimate goal would be to have Congress step forward.”

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For its part, Comcast is asking the Commission to stick to its policy of not regulating the internet, arguing that its announced partnerships with companies like Vonage and BitTorrent, Inc. and Pando show that market forces are enough to ensure that pipe owners like Comcast don’t dictate how the internet grows.

“We believe our actions, taken in good faith in response to consumers’ concerns, further confirm the wisdom of the Commission’s long-standing policy showing show (sic) regulatory restraint,” the company wrote in a July 10 letter (.pdf) to the FCC.

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