Sunday, April 11, 2010

The "Net Neutrality" Decision & Business

In a lawsuit with far reaching implications for use and governance of the Internet (capital I), the 10th Cir. Court of Appeals ruled that despite that “Congress gave the [FCC] broad and adaptable jurisdiction so that it can keep pace with rapidly evolving communications technologies [and that t]he Internet is such a technology ... [the FCC has no] untrammeled freedom to regulate activities over which the statute fails to confer ... authority.” Based on that analysis, vacating the FCC's order which prevented Internet services from filtering the content you and I use every day. (See a summary here: "The F.C.C. will now have to reconsider its strategy for mandating “net neutrality,” the principle that all Internet content should be treated equally by network providers.")


The only real implication for business is that Comcast, and other service providers, may now slow access to certain websites (the site which spawned the FCC's ruling was BitTorrent, a peer-to-peer file transfer application which may be used to send legitimate as well as pirated software to and from individuals' computers.


If file transfers are important to your business, it is important to ask your Internet service provider if they will filter content you receive from the Internet, and if so, which sites they will filter. Also, look out for unexplained slowdowns transferring your legitimate downloads. However, also consider that the filtering of sites such as BitTorrent can drastically increase the bandwidth for other users.


Just because the FCC cannot protect you in this regard, businesses and individuals have the power to switch providers (presuming there are multiple providers in your area).

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