Comcast does not want public voices heard

On Monday, February 25, 2008 the FCC held a public hearing, hosted by the Berkman Center for Internet & Society on the campus of Harvard Law School. It turns out that Comcast was paying people to fill seats in the Ames Courtroom to prevent net neutrality supporters from participating in the dialog.

The hearing covered complaints leveled critics of Comcast that they are preventing competition by blocking the delivery of rival video services over their system. This lies at the heart of the net neutrality issue. One of the features of the IP network (at the heart of the internet) is that carriers can’t discriminate between packets of information that are being routed along the way. This means that IP networks can’t favor their bytes and discriminate a competitor’s bytes. Bits are bits, and IP routers don’t know what bytes belong to who. A good thing if you want to keep the internet free and open. This action to quiet public voices by Comcast is outrageous, but of course the mainstream media would never take this on as a story when there’s so much violence to cover that does a better job of keeping the electorate scared. But this scares me more than the report of another gang shooting in Boston. We have to assure that the internet continues to be a free and open market of ideas, however, open access and competition are anathema to the telecoms.