I was able to listen to a pretty good portion of the testimony at yesterday’s FCC hearing on broadband network management at Stanford University. My overall impression is that the public interest in a free, open internet got a pretty fair hearing, overall, with even some of the more “free market” economists having to admit market failure and problems with Comcast’s blocking BitTorrent, even if they still don’t like net neutrality (or at least not the term “network neutrality).
Two interesting moments for me were when Michele Combs from the Christian Coalition testified that Comcast was blocking torrents distributing the King James bible, and hearing from Robb Topolski, the software quality engineer who first identified and rooted out Comcast’s blocking technique. Highlights from some of the expert testimony air on today’s radioshow, already online, including an excerpt from Topolski.
As I mentioned yesterday, there were several people using Twitter from the audience in Stanford, posting quick updates on the action. I found this play-by-play really valuable, since I didn’t have the luxury to pay constant attention to the hearing webcast.
One of the persons twittering from the hearing, simX, posted a compilation of tweets, along with a great summary of the hearing.
SavetheInternet.com has a short summary with links to some of the written testimony.
The FCC has archived the audio from the hearing, along with captions [Real Audio].
Free Press is keeping a live blog of the FCC Hearing on Net Neutrality at Stanford University. Looks like at least 300 people have showed up to be in the audience so far.
I got too hung up with work to tune in right at 2 PM and the FCC’s RealAudio feeds are all full and I unfortunately missed Larry Lessig’s testimony (anyone able to record it?). Luckily there were still streams available at VON TV.
I just heard the rep from the Christian Coalition testify that the King James Bible–I believe that’s in the public domain, no?–is being shared over BitTorrent, therefore also blocked by Comcast. Interesting.
Tags: bittorrent, christian coaltion, comcast, fcc, hearing, net neutrality / free the internet!, standford
net neutrality / free the internet!, networks, telecomm, The FCC | Paul | 
April 17, 2008 3:56 pm | 
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I’m in San Jose, CA for Streaming Media West, an online media conference, which begins tomorrow. I’m very interested in hearing tomorrow’s keynote by Ashwin Navin, President & Co-Founder of BitTorrent, who is talking about how a commercial P2P network can be used to distribute legal audio and video content.
I hope he’ll address the recent revelation about Comcast interfering with its customers BitTorrent traffic and how that might be affecting his company’s business model. I can’t imagine he can ignore the issue — otherwise it’ll be the 900 pound gorilla in the room (and I’ll ask the question myself).
My experience in the online media industry is that network neutrality is the issue nobody wants to talk about too much, both because regulation is rarely a popular issue, and because there is the real hope that it isn’t needed. Unfortunately, Comcast’s interference with BitTorrent traffic–regardless of whether the shared content is permitted to be shared or not–is the single most clear example of a non-neutral network in action. So I’m very curious what BitTorrent thinks about Net Neutrality now.
I’ll be sure to blog this keynote the best I can (delayed a few moments due to the fact there’s no wifi in the presentation rooms themselves).
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