Court: FCC has no power to regulate Net neutrality

CNET NEWS ^ | April 6, 2010 8:15 AM PDT | Declan McCullagh

[fireman15]

I have mixed feelings on this one. It is wrong for government agencies to overstep their authority, but where I am at Comcast is the only game in town. For me it is either Comcast or nothing. It is a little worrysome when Comcast starts restricting access to certain types of internet traffic. In this case Comcast started throttling BitTorrent traffic and were told not to by the FCC. On October 15, 2008 Comcast discontinued their Newsgroup service.

I hardly ever use a BitTorrent client, but I use Newsgroups fairly frequently. Fortunately you can subscribe to a third party Newsgroup provider. On occassion one finds something that is available only through BitTorrent. It is a good way to distribute information that one prefers to be decentralized and more difficult to shut down. For those unfamiliar, BitTorrent is essentially a file sharing protocol. It has plenty of illegitimate uses but legitimate uses as well.

What I am concerned about now that Comcast has prevailed... is that they will start restricting my access to NetFlix streaming video, or my Vonage phone account. Both Vonage and NetFlix compete directly with services provided by Comcast. Comcast has a monopoly for the services they provide now and probably for quite a while to come in the area where I live.

[Nachum]

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