Free Speech Hit
Put out by Comcast, according to this report on Internet provider manipulation. Boston Herald:
Comcast and its critics are gearing up for a showdown that some say may determine the future ability of people to navigate freely around the Internet without corporate restrictions.
In an unusual move, the full board of the Federal Communications Commission will hold a special hearing next week at Harvard Law School in Cambridge to review charges that Comcast has deliberately interfered with attempts by high-speed Internet subscribers to share files online.
Comcast says it’s merely trying to manage traffic on the increasingly chaotic and heavily used Internet.
But critics, led by a group called SaveTheInternet.com Coalition, say Comcast and other Internet service providers are guilty of blocking the uploading of video, music and other data that the firms deem as potential content rivals.
“It’s a disaster for free speech and a disaster for competition on the Internet,” said Nicholas Reville, executive director of the Worcester-based Participatory Culture Foundation, a nonprofit group that produces open-source software for downloading videos over the Internet.
Reville and others say they’re convinced major telecom companies are hoping one day to control where, when and how people can navigate around the Web.
Topics: everything
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 3:10 pm on Friday, February 22, 2008
3 Responses to “Free Speech Hit”
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February 22nd, 2008 at 8:45 pm
Sure that it is a “free speech” issue, but it may also be a pimply faced teenager trying to download every movie known to mankind (and impacting everyone else in the neighborhood’s bandwidth issue). Let common sense reign.
February 23rd, 2008 at 12:05 am
one thing is for sure: if any group at all sees an advantage in controlling anything, it will do so.
And I don’t see anything wrong with ‘chaos’ on the internet. Regulating and planning and controlling brings up the big questions: who will do all this regulating and planning and controlling, HOW will they do it and WHY will they do it?
What’s wrong with the way things are now? If Comcast is so worried about all that “chaos”, why doesn’t it improve its infrastructure? Jeez, is there no end of whining and having meetings, and regulating?????
I see that the natives are getting restless in Britain, what with all that DNA gathering and cameras snooping all over the public spaces. But, it’s such a great idea, to regulate everything, so that police can do a really good job. Of course, from what I read, the streets of England are looking more and more awful, as the planning and regulating and spying drag a huge suffocating blanket over the land.
February 24th, 2008 at 2:49 pm
Heather, all well and good, until the kid down your street slows your connection to an absolute crawl (remember, cable internet works on the old party line principle).