Saul Hansell, writing for the New York Times, reports that US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chair Julius Genachowski plans on adding a fifth principle to the network neutrality concepts established by the federal agency in 2005. The fifth principle, according to Hansell, “will prevent Internet providers from discriminating against certain services or applications.”
Internet service providers, such as Comcast, have admitted discriminating against certain kinds of internet traffic. Last year the cable giant was sanctioned for slowing down and rejecting BitTorrent traffic on its network. Comcast has appealed the ruling, taking the position that the FCC’s network neutrality principles are invalid because they weren’t formally adopted as rules.
Hansell reports that Genachowski will propose adopting the principles as rules. This marks a fairly dramatic shift in the FCC’s core process. Under Kevin Martin, the FCC’s general mode of operation was to respond to complaints instead of adopting rules.
Genachowski is widely believed to favor allowing internet service providers to offer premium services for some internet content. By definition that’s not network neutrality and, yet again, a direct contradiction to the campaign promises of President Obama.
The concept of network neutrality is actually quite simple: internet service providers are common carriers and should be mandated to behave as such. Every internet service provider must open their networks to all comers and carry all bits that traverse their networks without discriminating against any traffic on their networks. Period.
Instead we get four principles that are so loosely defined as to be worthless and easily routed around; like “reasonable network management.” Now comes a mandate not to discriminate against “certain” services or applications. How about a simple mandate not to discriminate against any service, application, or traffic.
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