Eideard

The Federal Communications Commission is moving forward with its National Broadband Plan despite an appeals court decision earlier this week that called into question the agency’s authority over regulating the Internet.

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski issued a statement that said the court’s decision “does not change our broadband policy goals, or the ultimate authority of the FCC to act to achieve those goals.The court did not question the FCC’s goals; it merely invalidated one technical, legal mechanism for broadband policy chosen by prior commissions…”

Ayuh. Did anyone out there think that the last couple decades of FCC appointees did anything other than ask corporate approval for how high to jump? When so ordered?

In its 2010 Broadband Action Agenda the FCC said it plans to address more than 60 rules in the making and other proposals by the end of the year. The FCC said it was important to move forward with these items to reach its goals of helping 100 million U.S. homes get affordable access to broadband with download speeds of 100 Mbps over the next decade; promoting innovation, investment and competition and consumer interest in broadband; and providing a platform to improve energy consumption and monitoring, education, and health care…

Consumer advocates would like to see the FCC reclassify broadband Internet traffic so that it is treated like the traditional telephone network. This will give the agency the legal authority to regulate the Net.

All we need to do is get Congress in gear, the Democrats up on their hind legs – and lose more members of the Party of NO.

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Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski will unveil in a speech on Monday new proposals that would force Internet providers to treat the flow of content equally, say sources familiar with the speech.

The concept, referred to as net neutrality, pits open Internet companies like Google against broadband service providers like AT&T, Verizon Communications, and Comcast, which oppose new rules governing network management.

Advocates of net neutrality say Internet service providers must be barred from blocking or slowing traffic based on content.

Providers say the increasing volume of bandwidth-hogging services like video sharing requires active management of their networks and some argue that net neutrality could stifle innovation.

“He is going to announce rulemaking,” said one source familiar with his speech about broadband, to be delivered at the Brookings Institution, a public policy think tank. “The commission will have to codify into new regulations the principle of nondiscrimination.”

The most hypocritical aspect of the Telco/Cableco position is their whining over the amount of fibre utilized by consumers, small vendors, independent producers of video content – anyone but the fibre-owners and their backdoor buddies in the MPAA.

Then, the sky’s the limit on how much bandwidth is used to provide direct unregulated profit.

UPDATE: Here’s the speech.

Privacy? Har, har, har…
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An internet privacy law is coming, Congressman Rick Boucher promised, as he steered his committee into the marshes of online behavioral advertising, deep packet inspection and location-tracking services.

Boucher, a Virginia Democrat and longtime ally of digital rights groups, now heads the House subcommittee on Communications, Technology and the Internet. He said wants the committee to write a broad online privacy law this year.

For instance, Boucher made it clear he’s concerned about ISPs using so-called deep packet inspection technology, or DPI, to examine the data packets it delivers to and from its customers. “The thought that a network operator could track a user’s every move on the Internet, record the details of every search and read every email or attached document is alarming.”

But the Center for Democracy and Technology’s Leslie Harris warned the committee not to get too wrapped up with any particular technology, since the privacy threats change quickly — pointing out that current privacy laws are good in some areas — video rental records, for one — and non-existent in others…

It’s not clear how broad a law Boucher has in mind, though it’s likely to be some codification of generally accepted data-privacy practices. Those include telling people when you collect data and why, letting them choose to join in or not, using the data only for the reason you collected it, letting people see and correct the information and destroying it when its not longer needed…

The Free Press’s Ben Scott summed up what he and many consumer advocates would like to see in an overarching privacy bill.

“It needs to cover intentionality, behavior, and outcome,” Scott said. “Why do you want my information? What are you going to do with it? And what does that mean for me?”

I’ll second that.