Tag: Net Neutrality

Public Knowledge President and Co-Founder Gigi Sohn testified in front of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation this morning, at a hearing entitled "Broadband Providers and Consumer Privacy". Alongside Gigi, the hearing also featured testimony from representatives for AT&T, Time Warner Cable and Verizon. Gigi spent the majority of her time focusing on Deep Packet Inspection (DPI), a technology that--as you may know--is receiving a great deal of Congressional scrutiny as of late.

Public Knowledge President and Co-Founder Gigi B. Sohn today warned the Senate Commerce Committee of the privacy intrusion that occurs when Internet Service Providers (ISPs) inspect detailed customer information using a technique called Deep Packet Inspection (DPI). In testimony to the Committee, Sohn told the Committee: “It should be clear that the very nature of DPI technology raises grave privacy concerns.” She described DPI as: “To put it simply, Deep Packet Inspection is the Internet equivalent of the postal service reading your mail.

The following statement is attributed to Gigi B. Sohn, president and co-founder of Public Knowledge:

“This latest in a string of big-money front groups is nothing more than the most concentrated attack on the free and open Internet we have seen to date. Combining the power and influence of AT&T and the entertainment industry means only that both are going to wage an all-out war for the right to filter every bit of data anyone sends across the Internet. We are pleased to see that Verizon continues to resist the incessant and misguided pressure from the entertainment industry.

Comcast late Sept. 19 filed its network management report and compliance with the Federal Communications Commission as a result of the FCC order finding the company violated the Commission’s open-network policy statement. The following statement is attributable to Gigi B. Sohn, president and co-founder of Public Knowledge:

“We appreciate the time and effort Comcast has taken to compile a network management plan. It is a very detailed and very technical document that deserves close scrutiny from the FCC and from private-sector observers. It appears that the plan does not discriminate against any particular protocols and does not involve using Deep Packet Inspection.

“We need to ensure the plan does not harm consumers. However, there are a number of questions raised to which we do not have the answers. Why, for example, does Comcast need both its real-time network management system and the 250 GB monthly cap on consumer usage?

Back on August 20, the FCC released its Order resolving the complaint against Comcast for blocking P2P protocols. As part of the remedy, the FCC ordered Comcast to provide a full report on its current “network management practices” within 30 days, along with a transition plan for how it intended to manage traffic after it discontinued its current practices. The FCC then invited Free Press and anyone else interested to “keep a sharp eye on Comcast” and on the FCC’s enforcement.

Comcast has sworn up and down that it will comply with the FCC’s Order and it is only appealing in the D.C. Circuit as a matter of principle. I, having a nasty and suspicious mind, so doubt this noble intention that I have filed a law suit of my own to get the FCC to clamp down on Comcast now and not wait for future compliance. So, here we are at last on September 19, 30 days after the release and effective date of the Order.

As the institutions of Wall Street continue to crumble one after another, there’s a lesson to be learned for those of us who want to make sure the Internet remains as free and open in the future as it has been in the past.

The collapse of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers, AIG and the rest didn’t happen overnight. The situation has been brewing for years. The subprime mortgage crisis may have precipitated the immediate tragedy, but underpinning the whole mess is a philosophy about business and government. That way of thinking posits that deregulation is the best path for the economy, and that government is best when it’s out of the way to let the private sector do what it wants. That’s the thinking that led to the collapse of the savings and loan industry in the 1980s, and was revived ten years later to apply more broadly to the financial industry.

Prior to setting a cap on the amount of bandwidth a high-volume customer could use before having service terminated, Comcast instead cut off a set number of users regardless of how much bandwidth they used, according to documents released by Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum.

Comcast announced at the end of August that it would impose the 250 GB usage cap on subscribers that had been hinted at for weeks. The cap, which takes effect Oct. 1, appears to cover uploaded material and downloads, given that Comcast’s example included the number of digital photos that could be uploaded.

In announcing the cap on its Web site, Comcast said: “We’ve listened to feedback from our customers who asked that we provide a specific threshold for data usage and this would help them understand the amount of usage that would qualify as excessive.” Comcast made its announcement on Aug.

Comcast today appealed to the U.S. Appeals Court for the D.C. Circuit the Federal Communications Commission’s Aug. 20 order finding Comcast violated the Commission’s Open Internet principles. The following is the statement of Gigi B. Sohn, president and co-founder of Public Knowledge:

“We expected Comcast would appeal the Commission’s order. The company opposed it every step of the way, even as they failed to disclose their throttling of Internet traffic. We believe the Commission will prevail and the rights of Internet users will be protected.”

Former eBay president and CEO Meg Whitman’s speech to the Republican National Convention on Wed. night (Sept. 3) was notable for what it didn’t say. Whitman is a giant in her field. She was the head of one of the largest, most successful, most culture-changing companies to emerge since the modern Internet came into existence.

She made lots of money for eBay and from eBay. That was why her speech was so disappointing. The word, “Internet” didn’t appear once. Neither did “innovation” or “technology.” She talked about the economy and lowering taxes and creating jobs and took some political shots at the Democratic ticket. But there was not one word for the medium that vaulted her and her company into American business history, the medium that is the greatest vehicle for innovation and consumer empowerment we have.

It wasn’t always this way.

It didn’t take Comcast long to run away from its latest embarrassment. On Wednesday, Comcast Senior Vp Mitch Bowling told Bloomberg News that in an effort to control traffic, Comcast might slow down the transmission of packets from its heaviest users by “10 minutes to 20 minutes.” Here’s the story. PC Magazine had the same story.