[Chapter-delegates] [from IP] FCC Order on Comcast - a good job

[Gene Gaines]

Message (below) sent by David Reed to David Farber's IP list.

The U.S. FCC has taken many missteps in recent years; I am
very pleased to see this excellent FCC decision finding Comcast
guilty of misusing Internet protocols to slow down P2P traffic.

This puts the whole issue of integrity of fair use of the Internet
where it should be -- Not in "Net Neutrality" but rather in terms
of "Internet Neutrality as defined by Internet protocols".

It is the IETF and its open, participative engineering protocol
development process that should be defining use and operation
of the Internet, not a committee of any political body.

This brings home to me again the importance of the IETF and ISOC.

Free flow of information is as important to me as the air I breathe.

How could I live without it?

Gene Gaines
Sterling, Virginia USA

Begin forwarded message:

From: "David P. Reed" <dpreed at reed.com>
Date: August 20, 2008 12:09:08 PM EDT
To: David Farber <dave at farber.net>
Subject: FCC Order on Comcast - a good job

Dave - I just posted this on my blog, regarding the FCC opinion and order
about Comcast RST injection. Your readers might be interested.

-David P. Reed
----------------------------------

Permalink: http://www.reed.com/blog-dpr/?p=12

FCC Order on Comcast - a good job <http://www.reed.com/blog-dpr/?p=12>

The FCC today issued its formal opinion and order in regard to Comcast's
degrading of P2P and other traffic using DPI and RST injection <
http://www.reed.com/blog-dpr/Comments%20on%20FCC%20order%20FCC-08-183A1>. Of
course, I've been very interested in this, especially since I was asked by
the Commission to testify as a witness at the en banc hearing at Harvard Law
School in February.

After reading the order this morning, I felt like commending the FCC - so I
filed a formal comment with the FCC, and I posted it on my site <
http://www.reed.com/blog-dpr/?page_id=10> as well. The decision is a good
decision for the Internet. In short here's why:

The decision shows that the agency understands the importance of the
technological principles of the Internet's design.

The Internet is a /world-wide system that does not belong to any one
operator/, whether providing access lines or backbone transport.

The design of the Internet Protocols specifies clear limits on what
operators can and cannot do to Internet Protocol datagrams when those
operators are acting as part of the Internet.

Not obeying those limits poses a serious risk to the continued success of
the world-wide Internet. Happily, the FCC recognized and exposed Comcast's
transgressions of those limits.

Though Internet design is not a law, the Commission's order respects the
importance of that design, and rejects Comcast's misbehavior and deception
in applying technologies that go against the principles of that design.
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