FCC.politics.gov
July 30, 2008; Page A14
Bad personnel decisions have haunted the Bush Administration, and one of the bigger disappointments is Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin. In his last months as Master of the Media Universe, he seems poised to expand government regulation of the Internet.
The FCC is by all accounts planning this week to uphold a complaint against Comcast, the cable company accused of throttling attempts to trade movies and other high-bandwidth files on its network that slow down Internet service for everyone else. Comcast has maintained that its "terms of service" agreement allowed such network-management. In any case, earlier this year the cable company reached an agreement with BitTorrent, the popular file-sharing service being used on Comcast's network, and settled the matter. Or so we thought.
![[Kevin Martin]](gif1Zge0zcDyj.gif)
But Mr. Martin isn't satisfied with a private resolution of this technical dispute. Instead, he wants to make an example of Comcast in order to advance a "network neutrality" industrial policy being pushed by high-tech rivals like Google and pro-regulation advocacy groups like MoveOn.org, Consumers Union and Free Press. Net neutrality proponents want all Internet traffic treated "equally." They would prohibit Internet service providers from using price to address the ever-growing popularity of streaming video and other bandwidth-intensive programs that cause bottlenecks.