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Hundreds gathered at Harvard's law school on Thursday for an FCC hearing on net neutrality. At issue is whether all traffic on the internet should be treated equally. The FCC is investigating complaints that Comcast has interfered with certain types of web traffic, specifically peer to peer file-sharing. Comcast denies blocking any kind of traffic saying that it only manages protocols during high traffic periods. A morning and an afternoon panel gave testimony with some of the most compelling coming from BitTorrent's chief technology officer.
Eric Klinker
CTO, BitTorrent
While its true today in the application space we might hold a mantle of leadership-that we've been at this business a while, that we invented the internet-I believe as networks get better especially in Asia we're beginning to see those countries overtake us. And their emerging status as innovation centers, not just manufacturing centers, is a direct relationship to their investment that they've made in broadband. In particular in the information society, that again, is the greatest factor that will drive those information economies.
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BitTorrent, file sharing programs, and online video are arguably most affected by the alleged network management.
Eric Klinker
CTO, BitTorrent
To block BitTorrent traffic, to cripple this basic internet experience, would cripple the experience for a lot of individuals we wouldn't necessarily want to impinge upon, students, innovators, artists, organizations that really need this technology the most.
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The panel did have a chance to offer solutions to the commission.
David Clark
Research Scientist, MIT
I would prefer that the bits that select those packets for enhanced service are selected by the user. The user could say this telephone call is realy important and I want this telephone call to go through and imagine in any given month 10% of your traffic could be high priority. You could say, this is it, man, I want it here. It could be my choice if that's a phone call or a game or I'm trying to get a bid in on ebay or whatever I'm trying to do. I would like the user to be able to assign those priorities.
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Without some kind of solution soon, the United States will fall further behind countries with far more advanced broadband access.
Eric Klinker
CTO, BitTorrent
We are seeing all this innovation in Asia and it is one of the big reasons why we do a lot of our business in Asia. Our business is where the broadband is. Make no mistake these countries are innovating because they have a capability we do not have here in this country.
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After the day's hearing, the FCC Chairman voiced his concerns.
Kevin Martin
Chairman, FCC
As I indicated in my opening, one of the main concerns I have, and I heard it repeated throughout both panels, was that there wasn't a transparency to some of the network practices engaged in. That's a significant concern that I have with the way these network management practices have been engaged in by Comcast.
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The commission says it is looking to act quickly, but stresses its need for a chance to deliberate. Meanwhile, some critics have charged that the FCC doesn't have the jurisdiction to respond to these complaints.
Kevin Martin
Chairman, FCC
I believe it was in my Senate testimony over a year ago that I said the commission would respond to complaints about companies violating our network neutrality rules. And indeed we responded in the past. What we're talking about today is a cable operator who has potentially blocked or degraded the downloading of video applications. In a very similar context we took action against a telephone operator who had degraded or blocked a voice over IP application. And we took action against that and said that they had the incentive to be discriminating and this was a violation of all our principles and that we had authority to act. I've said we have authority to act on similar cases as well.
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For the IDG News Service, I'm Nick Barber reporting from Cambridge.
