01.09.10
A Question Of Authority? Or Parade Of Errors?
Federal judges on Friday seemed unwilling to accept the FCC’s argument for censuring Comcast after it was discovered in 2008 to be throttling or slowing down file-sharing traffic on its Internet connections, according to a story published by The Wall Street Journal.
“You can’t get an unbridled, roving commission to go about doing good,” the WSJ quoted Chief Judge David Sentelle of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
Judges question FCC authority in Comcast case | Signal Strength – CNET News
In a way, it is a good thing that judges are questioning the authority of government agencies to act. On the other hand, Comcast and the cable industry are creations of the FCC, in that it was federal rules that gave them the ability to do what they do. Just as with the telephone companies, FCC rules, including the choice to allow them to cut out ISP intermediaries for their high-speed Internet access services, is at the heart of the problem.
You see, if I sign up for dial up service, I might be able to get it through my local telephone company. There are, or were, dozens of companies (including AOL) that offered such Internet access across the country. Locally, Sunrise Internet Services offers it to this day.
If I want high-speed Internet across DSL or cable connections, the company that owns the lines does not have to allow other companies to compete, thanks to decisions made by the Commission. This decision was the one that enabled Comcast to take anti-consumer actions such as polluting the downloads of its paying customers. The errors the FCC (and Congress and the Department of Justice) made dating back into the late 1990s are what allowed Comcast and other “last-mile” owners to act with impunity toward consumers.
