Groups call on FCC to strengthen net neutrality proposal

[Jeffersons Ghost]

Groups call on FCC to strengthen Internet proposal

By Jasmin Melvin

WASHINGTON, Dec 10 (Reuters) - The open Internet principles laid out by the top U.S. telecommunications regulator last week fall short of "real" net neutrality, more than 80 groups said in a letter on Friday.

Public interest groups, businesses and civil rights groups signed the letter to the Federal Communications Commission, saying net neutrality rules should ban paid prioritization of online content.

They also said the framework FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski laid out last week gave wireless carriers too much freedom to police Internet traffic.

"This is a make-or-break issue, and the signatories on this letter are unequivocal in their demand that fatal flaws with Chairman Genachowski's draft proposal be fixed immediately," Sascha Meinrath, director of New America Foundation's Open Technology Initiative, said on Friday.

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN1012489820101210

Net neutrality
Updated: Dec. 2, 2010

The concept of “net neutrality’' holds that companies providing Internet service should treat all sources of data equally. It has been the center of a debate over whether those companies can give preferential treatment to content providers who pay for faster transmission, or to their own content, in effect creating a two-tier Web, and about whether they can block or impede content representing controversial points of view.

Currently, Internet users get access to any Web site on an equal basis. Foreign and domestic sites, big corporate home pages and low-traffic blogs all show up on a user’s screen in the same way when their addresses are typed into a browser. The Federal Communications Commission has come out in favor of keeping things that way, but its ability to do so has been in doubt since a federal appeals decision in April 2010 restricted its authority over broadband service.

Some large Internet and telecommunications companies are talking, however, about creating a two-tiered Internet with a fast lane and a slow lane. Google and Verizon, two leading players in Internet service and content, came out with a joint proposal that took a different approach. In a joint policy statement they issued in August 2010 they proposed that regulators enforce those principles on wired connections but not on the wireless Internet. They also excluded something they called "additional, differentiated online services."

In other words, on mobile phones or on special access lanes, carriers like Verizon and AT&T could charge content companies a toll for faster access to customers or, some analysts worry, block certain services from reaching customers altogether.

http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/reference/timestopics/subjects/n/net_neutrality/index.html