New FCC Net Neutrality rules based on flawed report
Last week, the FCC Wireline Bureau and Legislative Affairs briefed House and Senate committee staffers about their justification for a Notice of Proposed Rule Making (NPRM) at its October 22nd 2009 meeting. Digital Society has confirmed with multiple sources involved in the matter that there were significant questions raised during and after the briefings.
First, staffers were concerned about the economic impact of the forthcoming regulations. Our sources indicate that the FCC waved these concerns off saying that they had no plans to do an economic analysis on the impact of the new regulations. Second, staffers wanted to know why these new FCC regulations are needed now when the FCC has already demonstrated its resolve and ability to handle any issues that may arise. The FCC cited an academic paper that allegedly showed thousands of instances of blocking, but they would not disclose to the House and Senate what the paper was. This refusal to collect relevant data and disclose key sources is surprising in light of the fact that this new FCC claimed to be transparent and “data driven”.
Digital Society has since received a copy of this report from sources close to the matter and it turns out to be a PDF version of the Glastnost BitTorrent TCP reset study conducted by the Max Planck Institute based out of Germany. But there are two serious problems with the use of this report to justify new FCC rules. For one thing, the Glastnost report indicates that the three ISPs (Comcast, Cox, and StarHub) that utilized TCP resets stopped using them between middle and end of 2008. That means the concern over the use of TCP resets is now moot even in the absence of new FCC rules. The second major concern is that the data in the Glastnost study appears to be highly suspect.
Computer networking pioneer Richard Bennett who ran the Glastnost BitTorrent simulation tool from his computer on a Comcast broadband connection found that the Glastnost tools were very misleading. On 2 out of 2 Glastnost simulations, the tool claimed that Bennett’s ISP blocked his upload with TCP resets. But Bennett had confirmed that he was able to seed (dedicated upload mode) BitTorrent 2 out of 2 times with good performance before and after he ran the Glastnost test. So while the Glastnost simulation reported 100% failure, Bennett was able to seed with 100% success at the same time. That would indicate that the data from the Glastnost simulation is highly suspect.
It appears that the report cited by the FCC which supposedly proves that something needs to be done about TCP resets actually shows that nothing needs to be done at this point because all ISPs have stopped using TCP resets by the end of 2008. Furthermore, the data which the FCC cites not only lacks peer review but it has been shown to be completely unreliable.
Recently heard about this on the Glen Beck show and in my research-have not seen much about content cntrolled. From what I can percieve(if you can respond back to this to let me know if I am on the right track.)
Network Neutrality is designed to stop companies(like mine-Blue Ridge Cable) to stop offering tiered services. For instance, I pay for their highest service to have the highest download/upload speeds.
As Isee it, this will stop competition and innovation where all will have the same level of service and slow internet traffic to crawl since not everyone can always afford the priemiere services.
I keep hearing of controlling content and am sure it probably does happen from time to time so to make it “fair” for all we will all have the same slow service(why many went from dial up to Broadband)
When i keep seeing them showing the comments of President Obama while campaigning ensuring everyone has broad band is the same as anything that the government wants to get involved with where everyone might have broadband, but also this leaves no incentives for our providers to give quality efforts to improve the product and we are basically back to a little bit better then dial up yet not as good as we have it now.
In other words, this is another way to regulate commerce and make it worst, especially sance many found an income stream of selling and buying on the internet(which I do often) and will also cause many to start losing money and eventually some great companies foregoing internet business.
As I see it as a further control, devolution, and destruction of good ole fasioned capitalism which has worked very well in the unregulated digital world.
Please, if I am wrong and getting my facts and perceptions wrong, please correct me on this.
Thanks
God bless
Dave Emme
Thanks Dave,
The content censorship issue is is a false issue designed to trick people into supporting Net Neutrality regulation.
The actual regulation involves a lot of things that have nothing to do with stopping content censorship since censorship was never an issue to begin with. If you want to read what Net Neutrality regulation actually does, this article will explain it all.
http://www.digitalsociety.org/2009/09/hr3458-a-dangerous-experiment-in-internet-regulation/
Did you just disappear a post about the Nook e-reader?
No, you’re confusing my personal blog with Digital Society. The Nook e-reader post never appeared on Digital Society.
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